Developing a sense of place toolkit: Identifying destination uniqueness

Abstract

It has long been recognised that the tangible and intangible characteristics that make a location distinctive and memorable contribute significantly to destination image. How this destination feel is communicated has largely been the domain of place branding and destination marketing, which have the potential to miss stakeholder voices. Recently though, practitioners are starting to carefully consider ‘sense of place’, that is an emotional attachment to place, which is defined more carefully in the literature review of this article, and which corresponds with long-running academic discussions. This paper attempts to identify some of these and bridge the gap between academic theory on sense of place and practice. In the UK, many rural areas are now seeking to operationalise sense of place through toolkit documents that might inform landscape interpretation and destination branding. A scenario echoed internationally, where local distinctiveness features in both rural and urban planning. However, sense of pl...