Making Sense of Place Attachment: Towards a Holistic Understanding of People-Place Relationships and Experiences

The article is an attempt to make sense of the different interdisciplinary perspectives associated with people’s attachment to places with a view to construct a holistic template for understanding people-place relationships and experiences. The author took note of the theoretical contributions of Jorgensen & Stedman (2001), Scannell & Gifford (2010), and Seamon (2012, 2014) to construct an integrative framework for understanding emotional links to places and people’s perception and experience of places. This was done with the intention of illuminating the meaning of place and the different “places” people get attached to. The paper concludes by incorporating different place frameworks with the intention of establishing a holistic model for understanding the various attributes and perceptions of people-place relationships and experiences.