ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I draw on phenomenological and related qualitative research to consider aspects of places and place experience that contribute to place attachment, which I define as the emotional bonds between people and a particular environment or place. I identify three consequential physical and lived qualities that contribute to place attachment, whether that attachment involves positive or negative feelings. First, environmental ensemble refers to the material and geographical qualities like topography, weather, natural landscape, human-made elements, and all other environmental features that make a place unique physically. Second, people-in-place refers to the human worlds associated with an environmental ensemble and includes individual and group actions, experiences, understandings, and events relating to the particular place. Third, common presence refers to the material and lived “togetherness” of a place sustained by both its physical and human qualities. The common presence of a place has bearing on its degree of “life” and its environmental character and ambience—for example, the “Chicago-ness” of Chicago or the “Capri-ness” of Capri. I consider how each of these three aspects of place contributes to place attachment, particularly as it can vary over time, becoming stronger, weaker, or remaining more or less the same.
