ABSTRACT

This chapter takes a spatial perspective to investigate urban residents’ place attachment to the historic environment they experience in their daily lives. It applies a PPGIS (public participation GIS) mapping approach to map historic places to which people form emotional attachments, and spatial statistics, more specifically spatial point process analysis, to examine the spatial relationships between such historic places and places that people visit as part of their daily lives. The chapter proposes an emotional GIS (EGIS) methodology for registering, displaying and exploring emotional data, as well as understanding and characterising the spatial attributes of place attachment. The research chooses Edinburgh as the case study area and members of local civic associations and a Facebook group, Lost Edinburgh, for sampling. In so doing, it provides a valuable window into exploring the values of EGIS as a tool for facilitating public participation in planning and conservation.