Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the enabling capacities of place attachments in the context of change and mobility. In a world of global climate change, urbanization, migration and displacement, place changes are inevitable, and arguably becoming more prevalent. Traditional conceptualizations of place attachments in this context, might understand a persons’ attachments to places as resistant to change and antithetical to mobility. Indeed, there is a sedentarisitc belief in much of the place attachment literature that supports a view that change threatens attachments and therefore connotes something negative to be resisted. For example, place attachment has been linked in the literature to what is called “place protective action,” which essentially describes resistance to adapting places. However, when places attachments are understood as flexible and dynamic, they have a much greater enabling capacity in the face of change. With this theoretical contribution, we propose a reconsideration of the potential of place attachments by focusing on the enabling capacities of attachments. Through a review of emerging research and an examination of cases illustrating responses to different types of place changes, this paper sketches the contours of place attachments as an adaptive and empowering force that can facilitate coping, help people respond flexibly to change, and initiate processes to mitigate negative impacts of place changes. In this way the enabling and adaptive capacity of place attachments is further articulated.