A Situated Understanding of Residents' Caretaking Attitudes Toward Shared Spaces in Three High-Rise Gated Developments in Shanghai

Abstract

In a residential development that incorporates collective property rights, there are interior and exterior shared spaces collectively owned and used by multiple residents. These shared spaces defy a stark public-private division. Applying the perspective of situated cognition in a case-oriented qualitative analysis, this study investigated residents' caretaking attitudes about shared spaces in three high-rise gated developments in Shanghai, China. Qualitative data was obtained from 61 long-term residents pertaining to situational environments, situated persons, person-environment transactions, and environmental perception and meanings. Results revealed that the entanglement of residents and environmental settings in these developments defined different types of holistic person-environment units, which further implied different caring attitudes. The investigation also demonstrated diagrammatic data coding and displays as effective case-oriented analytical techniques to present and compare ecological units of analysis. Discussion articulates a holistic application of situated cognition in environment-behavior research.