Place and Identity in a Changing World

Various terminology has been used to define people's interconnection to their environment; terms such as place identity, landscape identity, urban identity, or place attachment. Each of these terms centres on the relationship between people or groups and the natural or built environment they occupy. Connection to a neighbourhood, city, region, country or a specific landscape has proved to be important for understanding the impact of landscape changes on people's identity, namely to understand the intergroup relations, the satisfaction to the place, and the impact of place identity in the place protection or in terms of pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours.

In studying the relationship between people and places, disciplines, including psychology and sociology, predominantly focus on the importance of the characteristics of place for the identity of individuals and groups. As such, these disciplines consider identity to place as a social construction, with places thus appearing as an integral part of the identity of individuals and groups. Other scientific areas such as architecture, landscape architecture or geography put particular emphasis on the characteristics of places, assuming that place identity or landscape identity is defined as the “perceived uniqueness of a place”.

These two aspects are intertwined. This Research Topic will focus on how changes to places or people impact and alter place identity. Reference can be made to the importance of the transformations that result from the often interrelated factors of global movement of people through tourism or migrations, changes to the landscape through urbanization, climate change and also changes arising from actions to mitigate or adapt to climate change. All these processes, whether centred on the territory or the people, lead to changes in identity that can be disruptive in relation to the established identity.

Many studies already focus on concepts such as place identity or place attachment as an important factor to place satisfaction, community solidarity and involvement, and pro-environmental behaviour. Consequently in this Research Topic we aim to bring together research on people-place bonds, and psychological ownership to get a broader understanding of the diverse ways that place matters to people and may shape social relations within and across groups.

We welcome contributions considering a variety of places at different geographical scales, countries, regions, towns, neighbourhoods, or a particular local park or square. We are open to, and actively encourage, a plurality of theoretical and methodological approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods.

We envision papers to deal with for example but not exclusively the following topics:
- Understanding place identity as a dynamic process
- Impact of landscape changes on communities
- Impact of migrations on the identity of the neighbourhood or city
- Place identity and intergroup relationships
- Place identity and intra-group solidarity and motivating stewardship behaviours (e.g. pro- environmental actions, civic involvement, etc.)
- Methodologies to capture place identity
- Integration of collaborative mapping
- Mainstreaming place identity in policy planning.