Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Applications

Recipient of the 2014 EDRA Achievement Award.

Place attachments are emotional bonds that form between people and their physical surroundings. These connections are a powerful aspect of human life that inform our sense of identity, create meaning in our lives, facilitate community and influence action. Place attachments have bearing on such diverse issues as rootedness and belonging, placemaking and displacement, mobility and migration, intergroup conflict, civic engagement, social housing and urban redevelopment, natural resource management and global climate change.

In this multidisciplinary book, Manzo and Devine-Wright draw together the latest thinking by leading scholars from around the globe, capturing important advancements in three areas: theory, methods and application. In a wide range of conceptual and applied ways, the authors critically review and challenge contemporary knowledge, identify significant advances and point to areas for future research.

This volume offers the most current understandings about place attachment, a critical concept for the environmental social sciences and placemaking professions.

Lynne C. Manzo is an environmental psychologist and associate professor in the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments, Seattle, Washington, USA. She specializes in the study of place meaning, attachments, identity, the politics of place, and the experience of displacement in the context of public housing.

Patrick Devine-Wright holds a Chair in Human Geography at the University of Exeter, UK, and has researched the relevance of place attachments and place identities for understanding "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) controversies over the siting of energy technologies.