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Indeed, connections to physical places are critical to humans; lack of contact with physical space threatens people to feel overwhelmed and lose some of their identity. A persons attitude to a place as something familiar, understandable, meaningful, and the sense of belonging caused by this attitude is defined as a sense of place. Often people feel it not for specific territorial units (a house, a park, a neighborhood), but only for a generalized image of these places, such as a country. The term sense of place is used in humanitarian geography, sociology, urban studies, and philosophy. And in environmental psychology, which studies the relationship between humans and the physical environment, the concept of attachment to place is more common (Gurney et al. 10078). Attachment to a particular space is a positive emotional connection that occurs between a person and their environment.
The concept of a sense of place derives from the phenomenological philosophy of Martin Heidegger, from the works of Michel Foucault and Georg Simmel. The central thesis of modern cultural geography: the image of any space is created during the interaction of its inhabitants. That is, people perceive a place not as physical streets, infrastructure, nature but as a society-created semantic construct consisting of many elements. In turn, place attachment is a term of environmental psychology that describes an individuals feelings about a place and its formation (Kalia). Every person has their own desires and ideas about good and comfortable an image of a perfect environment. Correspondence of the desired and authentic forms of the domain is the primary condition for the emergence of place attachment. The second necessary condition is that a person must improve this environment, bring it to the desired state. Attachment to a place can be experienced only when one is spiritually, morally, or physically invested in that place.
The place is a subjective and social construct, and a sense of place is the result of interaction with it, in which a person associates the latter with personal memories and life history. A sense of place refers to the emotional and physical connection one can experience concerning physical space and its contents and contents (Raymond 2). However, there is still no unified interpretation of the concept of a sense of place and no unified opinion about some justly arising questions about this concept. For example, it is not clear whether a sense of place generates attachment to it or whether, on the contrary, a sense of place emerges through a persons emotional positive attitude to the environment.
Now everyone can use the Internet to immerse themselves in another culture in real-time, order any foreign dish at home, or preach unconventional values for their country. This can lead to a loss of territorial identity a sense of belonging to a particular place (Kalia). When people borrow other peoples traditions, lifestyles, and styles, their own uniqueness is eroded. The uniqueness of the environment in which such people live also deteriorates. From this point of view, the most stable and strongest collective sense of place is experienced by residents of closed, small, remote settlements or islands that preserve their identity. In this regard, the benefits of modernity have much less impact on individual attachment to place than group one.
It is important to note that attachment to a particular area increases with the individuals age but not with the length of residence. That is, the change of territorial identity can be a part of the life cycle. Thus, growing up is accompanied by leaving the parental home and starting a family by moving to separate housing. This suggests that significant changes in the life cycle accompanied by a change of self can involve both a change of residence and the place to which an individual feels affection.
However, it should be borne in mind that a deep passion for a place limits a persons development. Besides, there are also variants of dangerous attachment to particular spaces. From the point of view of cognitive science, emotions, especially negative ones, lead people to cognitive distortion. They lead to an only intuitive and sensual perception of what is going on, which is not rational. In doing so, people refuse to notice dangerous facts about their location that would move them. For example, such details could be the number of deaths in hot spots or earthquake-prone zones. Finally, an important point that extinguishes ones fear of environmental hazards is those who continue to live in dangerous places. This is due to the fact that the risk seems weaker when shared by someone else.
Thus, if people are forced to permanently leave the place they were connected, they will keenly feel the loss and experience inner breakdown and destruction. Strong attachment to a particular environment is usually associated with great satisfaction with ones own home and an experience of stability in the future. The stronger a persons attachment to a place, the more stressful it can be if they are parted from it. However, in cases where attachment turns into something that deprives a person of all freedom, one should talk about addiction, such as addiction to alcohol or drugs.
Works Cited
Gurney, Georgina G., et al. Redefining Community Based on Place Attachment in a Connected World. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, no. 38, 2017, pp. 1007710082.
Kalia, Saumya. What Do We Lose When We Dont Inhabit Physical Spaces Like Offices, Universities? The Swaddle, 2021, Web.
Raymond, Christopher M., et al. Sense of Place, Fast and Slow: The Potential Contributions of Affordance Theory to Sense of Place. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, no. 1674, 2017, pp. 1-14. Web.
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