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

Abstract

This paper examines potential contributions to environmental psychology that arise when attempting to reconcile the concept of place attachment with an increasingly mobile world. Based on the assumption that mobilities of various sorts are becoming commonplace, we develop a theoretical argument about how people-place bonds are forged and become dynamically linked to mobility practices. First, we argue that, as mobilities increasingly dominate modern life, they shift our understanding of place and the habitual ways we relate and bond with places, away from a conception of people-place relations as mostly fixed and stable. Second, we document how past research on place attachment has generally embraced a “sedentarist” meta-theory criticized within the so-called “mobilities turn” in the social sciences. Third, we present a conceptual framework built around the idea of a continuum of “fixity to flow,” as a way to re-theorize and unify the various studies of place attachment, place identity and sense of place that have begun to grapple with mobility. The article then presents the concept of fluid people-place bonds, in order to grasp not only how mobilities affect people’s experiences of place, but also how the very nature of place and people-place bonds is changing in a mobilized age. Finally, we sketch out a research agenda with novel lines of inquiry and methodological approaches for advancing understanding of people-place bonds in a highly mobile world.