Title: Place attachment and participation in management of neighbourhood green space: a place-based community management

Authors: Bharati Mohapatra; Abdul Razak Mohamed

Addresses: Department of Planning, School of Architecture and Planning, Anna University, Chennai 600 025, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Planning, School of Architecture and Planning, Anna University, Chennai 600 025, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: This paper explores resident's sense of attachment to the neighbourhood parks and their attitude for participation in managing them and further examines the influence of attachment on participation in managing the park. To understand these relationships, 300 respondents from six neighbourhoods of the city of Bhubaneswar were interviewed. It is seen that formal interventions although have been successful in shaping public open spaces are not able to sustain the effort on long-term basis. This framework is build upon the foundation that community values and meaning attached to places can help to instil environmental stewardship and motivation to collaborate in the development and management process. The result shows that place attachment can lead to distinctive perspectives on collaborative management and create a truly relevant socially inclusive open space. Moreover, findings demonstrate the social underpinnings of emotional relationships to places and give insight to people-place relationships.

Keywords: place attachment; participation in management; sense of place; neighbourhood parks; place-based research; neighbourhood green spaces; community management; sense of attachment; India; public spaces; open spaces; community values; environmental stewardship; collaborative management; social inclusion; emotional relationships.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSOC.2013.054715

International Journal of Sustainable Society, 2013 Vol.5 No.3, pp.266 - 283

Published online: 22 Sep 2014 *

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