Incorporating Physical Environment-Related Factors in an Assessment of Community Attachment: Understanding Urban Park Contributions

Abstract

Community sociologists have examined community attachment through an almost exclusive focus on people’s social relations. Recent research efforts have noted the neglect of the physical place in traditional community sociological studies. Doing this has brought the physical environment into their discussions of community attachment. Despite this progress, we remain limited in our understanding of the physical environment’s contribution to peoples’ attachment to their communities and whether its effect on community attachment is applicable in the context of urban settings. In an effort to expand our knowledge of this topic, this study explored the contributions of the urban physical environment on community attachment. By selecting the Discovery Green Park as a typical form of physical environment in Houston, Texas, this study sought to investigate how people’s levels of community attachment could be predicted by: (1) peoples’ interactions with an urban park; (2) people’s emotional connections with such a park; and (3) peoples’ social interactions with others within the park. After conducting a series of block model regression analyses, we found that community attachment was not completely defined by social factors, but also depended upon peoples’ emotional connections with the local physical environment and the social interactions happening in those settings.

Too Old for Recreation? How Friendly Are Urban Parks for Elderly People?

“…Urban parks are important elements of city infrastructure, providing numerous and diverse functions and benefits. A not exhaustive list includes positive impacts on health and wellbeing, through recreation, leisure, and sport activities [1]; community development, sense of place, identity, and social cohesion, through cultural activities and providing space and occasion for social interaction and mutual understanding [2]; education, as people can discover plants, animals and natural phenomena or use parks as outdoor classrooms [3]; the economy, as the presence of parks generates investment opportunities, attracts customers, including tourists [4], and increases the price of properties in the vicinity [5,6]; ecosystem functioning, through a range of ecosystem services, from biodiversity conservation to resource production [7], improving air quality (absorbing pollutants, regulating humidity) [8], carbon sequestration, water management (storm water absorption, and run off regulation), and mitigating urban heat islands [9].…”

Profiling Attached Residents in an Urban Community in the U.S.: An Empirical Study of Social–Landscape Interactions within a Park

“…The present study builds on earlier work (e.g., Brehm et al 2004Brehm et al , 2006Clark and Stein 2003;Matarrita-Cascante et al 2010;Xu et al 2019) that suggests the physical environment's importance in predicting community attachment. Most studies taking this newer approach, however, have focused on the role of the natural environment with respect to amenity-rich rural communities.…”

“…For example, Matarrita-Cascante et al (2010) found that natural environment-based interactions and residence choice motivations (linked to natural amenities) resulted in increased community attachment for both long-term residents and seasonal residents in natural resource-rich areas. Similarly, Xu et al (2019) have shown that community attachment is not determined completely by social factors but also by physical environmental factors.…”

“…Given the physical landscape's potentially great contribution to community attachment, some recent research (e.g., Arnberger and Eder 2012;Brehm 2007;Brehm et al 2006;Matarrita-Cascante et al 2010) has incorporated this variable within the measurement of community attachment. Community attachment is not predicted solely by social factors; it also depends on residents' emotional connections and interactions with the local physical environment (Xu et al 2019).…”

The Effects of Mobility Expectation on Community Attachment: A Multilevel Model Approach

“…Community attachment and place attachment are similar concepts in that they both aim to capture the positive affections people build towards places [4,[12][13][14][15][16]. Similar to place attachment, community attachment can be defined at different scales.…”