ABSTRACT
Forming meaningful connections to places is an essential part of being a thinking and feeling human being. We feel attachment to places that have become an important part of our lives. This manifold process of connecting and attaching to a place is shaped by the layering of intertwined sensory experiences, memories and narrations of lived life in a place. This chapter examines how the sensed city atmosphere affects people’s attachment to the city. Combining the theoretical concepts of atmosphere and place attachment, the chapter explores how the affective time-spaces of a city and the mundane bodily experiences of place together form a feel of the city that is felt both subjectively and collectively. By using membership categorisation analysis and data from transgenerational walks, the chapter analyses how people categorise and characterise the city based on their sensory experiences and how these constructed categories of place then create attachment to place. Furthermore, it aims to recognise how some of the intersecting aspects in people’s identities, such as age and sexuality, create shared and differing experiences of the city, thus offering people different kind of possibilities of forming a bond with the city.
