Sense of place in spatial planning: applying instrumental and deliberative approaches at the River Lahn

“[…] Why do I write all of it? To show you how a young person was attached to his Heimat = Giessen – Lahn! From Africa and Indochina [now mainland southeast Asia] this one – and many more – drawings arrived… Homesickness… […]” (M.F. 2017). This quote from one of the citizens of the Lahn region is from a letter that arrived at my office, in response to our survey invitation on mapping meaningful places in the Lahn river landscape, the empirical research project of this dissertation, in a local the newspaper in summer 2017. She sent a letter with these lines and a copy of her brother’s drawings (see title page). The quote epitomizes how deeply we humans are connected to the places we live in and even to the places that we used to live in, like in the case of her deceased brother. What he drew in his letters to her sister reflects his memory, his Heimat, his roots, while being at a place that is far away and most likely differs considerably in terms of topography, flora, fauna, climate, and sensory experiences, such as smell. His drawing represents his sense of place, his emotional attachment to the place he grew up, as she points out in the letter. His attachment is expressed and translated in this picture of the river Lahn, a bridge, a house, trees, and even a little peninsula with a bench on it. Maybe. Without asking the person directly, we can only speculate whether he used to sit there contemplating the scenery or being with friends and family, but are still able to draw conclusions on the specific place meanings through theories and empirical research. In particular, the theory of sense of place helps us to assess and better understand place meanings and emotional connections between people and place. Visibly depicted in the brother’s drawing and letter, a person’s sense of place encompasses the emotional dimension of place attachment and the cognitive dimension of place meanings. Place attachments represent the intensity of the emotional connections to a place, and place meanings describe in more detail the reasons for this connection. Both concepts are important to generate a holistic picture, because for example the woman who wrote me the letter with the drawings of her brother could share an equally strong attachment to this little peninsula with the bench at the Lahn, but for completely different reasons, assigning different meanings to the place. Or they could both associate similar meanings with it, such as relaxation or the enjoyment of the scenery, but one feels more intensely emotionally connected than the other. The example shows that social construction of the place is strongly connected to its actual biophysical characteristics of the place. To clarify, a river such as the Lahn allows for the creation of meanings associated with fishing. Therefore, a change of the landscape or its accessibility, such as straightening the part of the river and removing the peninsula and bench seen in the drawing, can impact the perceived place meanings, as well as the emotional attachment. Vice-versa, sense of place can have an influence on how people interact and shape the landscape, relating directly to their environmental stewardship behaviour, which refers to actions taken, direct (e.g. collecting garbage) or indirect (e.g. signing a petition) that have an impact on a specific geographic location. We may hypothesize that the brother or even his sister would have opposed any planning decision on removing that peninsula, because their sense of place would have been threatened, or even destroyed. This illustrates how important the knowledge of the citizens’ sense of place can be for planners and decision-makers. Therefore, the dissertation argues that the integration of sense of place into planning processes likely enhances understanding of impacts of change, minimises potential conflicts, strengthens environmental stewardship, and increases identification with the plan proposal. Yet, such integration is still lacking and underexplored. Three main shortcomings could be identified inhibiting the use of sense of place in planning practices. First, there is a myriad of overlapping and conflicting terminologies and conceptualizations, including sense of place, place attachment, place identity, place dependence and so forth. This leads to a lack of comparability and the risk of oversimplification when working with sense of place and neglecting its sub concepts of place attachment and meanings. Second, there is a shortcoming of spatially explicit assessment methods, which would fit well in planning processes that use spatial indicators in their landscape assessments. There are very few examples that have spatially assessed sense of place including the sub concepts of place attachment and meanings. Existing spatial assessments on sense of place tend to rely on predefined spatial delimitations, such as administrative boundaries of neighbourhoods or national parks, which do not represent the actual exposure of an individual to its environment. Third and in consequence of the other two shortcomings, there is a lack of guiding material for planners on how to assess and implement sense of place in practice. Therefore, this dissertation aims to explore a systematic integration of sense of place into spatial and landscape planning. This is done following four guiding objectives: (1) Develop and evaluate a spatial indicator for the assessment of sense of place to enhance the systematic integration of sense of place into spatial planning (Article I and II) (2) Apply the indicator to assess sense of place of citizens in a case study area (Article II) (3) Explore the relationship between sense of place and environmental stewardship as an alternative to traditional planning practice (Article III) (4) Integrate sense of place into a planning workshop and derive suggestion for integrating sense of place into landscape planning practice (Article IV) To empirically address these research objectives, at first, a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) method is used to assess meaningful places in the Lahn river landscape. In a PPGIS survey, respondents were able to locate meaningful places on a map and respond more detailed questions on that place in relation to the specific place meaning, attachment and environmental stewardship. There are abundant examples of the use of PPGIS for the assessment of spatial values, landscape values or cultural ecosystem services. Secondly, the information on meaningful places was then integrated into a Geodesign workshop with stakeholder responsible for administrating the river and its landscape on different spatial scales. Geodesign is a deliberative approaches of social value assessment, which is based on geographic information and communication. The dissertations’ results show that the proposed meaningful place indicator to spatially assess sense of place (Article I and II) is valid, measurable, transferable and of practical relevance (Article I). It further demonstrates methodological and theoretical synergies between sense of place and the related people-place relation concept of cultural ecosystem services (Article II). Furthermore, Articles II and III empirically reveal the central role of place meanings in relation to the social and environmental context, as well as to environmental stewardship. Moreover, the integration of meaningful place information in a Geodesign workshop has shown to spur discussion, cover local knowledge gaps and be of interest and professional relevance. Finally, the dissertation provides a proposal of how, where and with what potential benefits sense of place can be integrated into landscape planning (Article IV)