Incorporating Physical Environment-Related Factors in an Assessment of Community Attachment: Understanding Urban Park Contributions

Ying Xu,David Matarrita-Cascante,A.E Luloff,Jae Ho Lee

doi:10.3390/su11205603

Ying Xu, David Matarrita-Cascante + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205603

Copy DOI

Abstract

Community sociologists have examined community attachment through an almost exclusive focus on people’s social relations. Recent research efforts have noted the neglect of the physical place in traditional community sociological studies. Doing this has brought the physical environment into their discussions of community attachment. Despite this progress, we remain limited in our understanding of the physical environment’s contribution to peoples’ attachment to their communities and whether its effect on community attachment is applicable in the context of urban settings. In an effort to expand our knowledge of this topic, this study explored the contributions of the urban physical environment on community attachment. By selecting the Discovery Green Park as a typical form of physical environment in Houston, Texas, this study sought to investigate how people’s levels of community attachment could be predicted by: (1) peoples’ interactions with an urban park; (2) people’s emotional connections with such a park; and (3) peoples’ social interactions with others within the park. After conducting a series of block model regression analyses, we found that community attachment was not completely defined by social factors, but also depended upon peoples’ emotional connections with the local physical environment and the social interactions happening in those settings.

Highlights

Community sociologists have long been interested in understanding social and emotional bonds to localities and the implications of such bonds for community life [1,2]
On a more theoretical level, to refine the approaches of previous research [5], this study expanded the theoretical framework by targeting multiple environment-related factors: respondents’ interactions with the environment through engagement of recreational activities, respondents’ spiritual and emotional bonds to the physical environment, and social interactions that occurred within physical settings
While prior studies focused on the predictive qualities of the physical/natural environment in amenity-rich communities, this research shifted the discussion to an urban setting

Summary

Introduction

Community sociologists have long been interested in understanding social and emotional bonds to localities and the implications of such bonds for community life [1,2]. Scholarship explored the role of the physical/natural environment in predicting community attachment [5,6,7,8,9]. Sociologists have only recently begun to respond to the neglect of the physical place in traditional community sociological studies and to bring the natural environment into their discussions of community attachment [10,11]. As noted by Brehm et al [5] and Matarrita-Cascante et al [9], the multifaceted characteristics of the physical/natural environment require further studies for us to better understand the dimensions of community attachment. Most work has focused on the natural environment in rural communities; whether urban physical environment contributes to community attachment remains largely unstudied [12]

Methods

Results

Conclusion