The place-making potential of citizen science: Creating social-ecological connections in an urbanized world

Abstract

A major challenge among urban planners and environmental organizations centers on how to maintain, strengthen, and create connections between humans and their natural environments. Public participation in scientific research (hereby referred to as citizen science) is often touted as a way to help people get to know, connect with, and care for an ecological place. But there is a lack of empirical evidence about if and how this works. This paper explores how citizen science can connect people more closely with place, create new understandings of what those places mean, and encourage people to participate more fully in being stewards of those places. We evaluated the motivations and experiences of citizen scientists working with the Billion Oyster Project (BOP), a nonprofit organization working to restore oysters to New York City (NYC) waters, to better understand the links between citizen science and sense of place with regard to urban waterfronts. We conducted semi-structured interviews with BOP participants and field site visits of volunteer-run oyster research stations along waterfront areas in NYC. We found that place-based citizen science can strengthen attachment to the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of place, and additionally has the potential to enhance both individual and collective social-ecological meanings of place through active processes of place -making. If urban sustainability movements are going to succeed in their mission to reconnect people to nature, there needs to be a broadened understanding of what this looks like beyond individualized constructs of connection.