Exploring the spatial-temporal variation of sense of place in situ

Abstract

The study of people-place relationships has always been important in understanding urban environments. In the context of non-native residents adjusting to new urban environments, the development of relationships with the surrounding environments emerge differently transitioning from mere functional bonds, to emotional and to more deeper bonds of belonging. The subjective perception among individuals of the objective world is studied in the fields of environmental psychology and urban studies as a multidimensional construct of sense of place that varies in both space and time and influenced by perceptions and experiences happening in situ. In existing literature little attention has been paid on the influence of low-level timestamp and in-situ experienced in the variation of sense of place. This study brings together the fields of environmental psychology and urban studies to explore the spatial and temporal variation of three dimensions of sense of place namely; place dependence, place attachment, and urban sentiment by exploring in-situ low-level timestamped data collected from non-native students in the cities of Castellón (Spain) and Lisbon (Portugal). We designed and implemented a comprehensive and improved methodological framework from suggestions in existing literature to include in-situ data collection through developing a context-aware mobile app that generates questionnaires in situ, data processing that integrates contextual data, exploratory analysis of the spatial, temporal, and contextual dataset and visualization of the spatial and temporal variation of the dimensions of sense of place in the dataset. Results revealed areas that represent a consistent positive sense of place. The city center of Castellón and neigborhoods in Lisbon exhibit consistent positive place dependence, where as place attachment exhibit neutral to positive values across the two cities, and urban sentiment exhibit mere variation across the two cities. For the contextual factors influence in the variation of the three dimensions, only weather exhibit a statistical significance. The methodological framework developed and implemented in this study allowed to create and explore the spatial, temporal, and contextual dataset on sense of place and can be used for further exploration or other longitudinal studies.