Shared shorelines, shared meanings?: Examining place meaning in Puget Sound

Abstract

Shorelines are distinct places that provide a diverse range of ecosystem services to local communities. These services include local foods, economic opportunities, recreational activities, therapeutic blue spaces, and notably sense of place. Shoreline benefits have partly contributed to a global increase in coastal populations, including in the Puget Sound region of Washington State (United States). Coastal population increases have simultaneously increased pressures on and modifications of the region's shorelines. Such pressures negatively impact the very services communities rely on or benefit from. This study examines communities' place meanings of shorelines in the Puget Sound region and the extent to which shoreline change plays a role in their meanings. Through the implementation of intercept surveys with cognitive mapping activities in four Puget Sound counties, the findings indicate that residents imbue a multitude of meanings with an emphasis on shoreline naturalness. Shoreline meanings are also influenced by place-based factors, like place of residence or shoreline property ownership, and linked to one other, like nature and beauty. Shoreline place meanings are powerful, reflecting communities' larger sense of place, which in turn informs their place attachments and place identities, but also place-based behaviors, management preferences, and potential responses to continued shoreline change, like changes caused by coastal infrastructure.