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Department of Spatial Planning

New paper on associations between sense of place and its spatial footprints

Examples of a simple and a complex sketched polygon from Lisbon © René Westerholt, Albert Acedo
René Westerholt has published a new article in the journal Urban Research & Practice on the relationship between a sense of place and its self-reported spatial footprints.

People bond with places and attribute meanings to them, which leads to the formation of a sense of place. Our recently published article examines how people translate the complex concept of sense of place into reductionist spatial footprints. Using a map-based survey in Lisbon, statistical shape complexity measures, and logistic regression, it is shown that the number of mapped polygonal footprint vertices correlates with the sense of place dimensions of place identity and place attachment. Moreover, it was shown that places with which people feel particularly connected lead to more complex forms of shape complexity that go beyond the number of mapped vertices. Our results contribute to the discourse on place-based information and to a better understanding of the relationship between place and its geometric representation.

Westerholt, R. and Acedo, A. (2024): Associations between sense of place and the geometric shape complexity of corresponding self-reported spatial footprints from Lisbon, Portugal. Urban Research & Practice, volume and pages pending. DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2024.2422630