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This study aims to examine whether any cultural difference exists on the influence of residents' place-based perceptions on perceived tourism impacts and support for tourism. A survey was distributed to urban residents in China and the United States. Structural equation modeling results show that self-esteem and self-efficacy were two important factors that influence residents' attitude to tourism impacts in both contexts. Distinctiveness was only observed as influential in the China study, while continuity was not evident in either culture. Results imply the need for destination marketers to use various strategies to reach the target market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports fandom represents a significant aspect of place identity, as demonstrated by the colorful landscapes associated with team loyalty. However, there has been little research on the geography of sports fandom. While several geographers have studied the link between Southern regional identity and the sport of stock car racing, American football is the most popular spectator sport in the United States, and it seems to have a particular strength in the United States South. Therefore, examining the geography of football fandom can add depth to the study of place identity. A 1988 article by Roseman and Shelley on the geography of collegiate radio football broadcasting serves as a milestone and our inspiration here. Using data on college football radio coverage as our proxy, we mapped college football fandom for the "Power 5" conferences. Our results show that state borders continue to have an important influence on the geography of college football fandom, but we also identified a strong region of identity in the South. Our results support the theory that place identity can be fruitfully examined using quantitative data, although many questions remain about how sports fans contribute to the making of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other groups can use counter-mapping to make land claims, identify areas of desired access, or convey cultural values that diverge from the dominant paradigm. While sometimes created independently, counter-maps also can be formulated during public participation mapping events sponsored by natural resource planning agencies. Public participation mapping elicits values, uses, and meanings of landscapes from diverse stakeholders, yet individuals and advocacy groups can use the mapping process as an opportunity to make visible strongly held values and viewpoints. We present three cases from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State to illustrate how stakeholders intentionally used landscape-values mapping workshops to amplify their perspectives in attempts to further political outcomes. We combine geospatial analysis with qualitative data to explore ways that landscape-values mapping were used as a political tool and how social scientists engaged in similar efforts can defend the scientific integrity of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent case studies of receiving communities have established that translocal immigrants are transforming their neighbourhoods, producing spaces of identity. While these studies have focused on the reshaping of local power dynamics, less attention has been given to the spaces, themselves, and the qualities that influence identity. This study utilises place identity literature, from environmental psychology, to explore the remaking of MacArthur Park, a public space at the centre of a Mexican and Central American immigrant community in Los Angeles, California. We find that new ‘place identities’ are influenced by the specific physical, social, and cultural elements of the park, as study participants attempt to maintain identities influenced by important places in their sending communities. The result is a park that has emotional significance for participants, significance that leads to agency – everyday and political practices – to protect the park, sometimes in the face of immense challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Renewable energy development is expanding throughout the United States. With the rapid increase in wind and other renewable energy production, the question of where such development is taking place becomes increasingly important. While many investigations of renewable energy structures' physical ecological impacts have been undertaken, the aesthetic and social impacts of such landscape alteration have received little attention. Moreover, research on how this type of landscape alteration affects the individuals and communities for whom development is visible has focused on areas where development has already occurred. Research has shown that communities located or invested in these areas have largely responded negatively to the aesthetic qualities and presence of visible renewable energy structures. While studying existing structures was a logical starting point for this research, investigating attitudes towards renewable energy structures before development takes place would allow visual preferences to be understood and discussed before construction. Conflicts surrounding the placement of renewable energy development have not been thoroughly researched. The roots of existing and potential conflicts need to be examined and understood. For the purpose of future development, it is important to understand reactions to renewable energy structures as the placement of future wind farms, solar panels, solar collectors and other renewable energy structures is decided. Landscape alteration due to renewable energy development needs to become a forefront agenda item for the social sciences. The topic needs to be investigated before development takes place and, most importantly, needs to add to local, regional and national conversations about where and how development should be adopted. This paper will present an affective starting point for this important social science agenda item. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Patterns of amenity migration and recreational home development in much of the USA since the 1990s are changing the local sociodemographic make-up and the relationships formed among people and place. We use the psychological constructs of place attachment, place identity, and place dependence to assess differences in these relationships among new and long-time residents and absentee and local residents in three rural counties in the Inland Northwest. We measured place bonding using data from a mail survey of local (n =531) and absentee (n =239) property owners. We compared structural models suggested in the literature on the psychology of place, and found that a two-dimensional model representing place attachment and place identity was appropriate for both local and absentee property owners. Local owners exhibited stronger place attachment and place identity than absentee owners. Place bonding constructs were also substantially less impacted by the total number of years a property owner had resided on his or her property than by the number of months per year they lived on the property. The findings indicate that sociodemographic changes such as those manifested in second-home development may lead to a population that is less emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively connected to the places in question, while sociodemographic changes from permanent in-migration may have a substantially smaller effect on place bonding. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A critical element in the process of racializing place is the construction of memorial landscapes. Using the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site and the surrounding Auburn Avenue community as a case study this paper argues that the sites dedicated to Dr King along Auburn Avenue embody a normative Civil Rights discourse which emphasizes national unity and non-violence and serves to silence and reframe more radical interpretations of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's social thought and action. More specifically the King National Historic Site represents King as a mainstream leader who used the existing democratic structure of US society to affect social change. This is related to the role the King National Historic Site plays in the construction of hegemony. A critical aspect of this process is the way this normative Civil Rights vision is used to market an understanding of the City of Atlanta. Thus the King memorials along Auburn Avenue are important sites to examine the connections between race, place and nation and the way the memorial landscape dedicated to Dr King embodies particular social values and ideas about the historic legacy of race in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing projects in the USA have suffered from stigma and a negative image ever since the first projects were built. An examination of the history of American housing policy can help us to understand this on one level. The strength of the dominant discourse, of housing projects as the last resort for those who fail to be part of mainstream society, is reflected in the fact that the mental geography among residents and outsiders of "The Ghetto", a small housing project in an otherwise mixed neighbourhood in New Haven, CT, USA, is one of a "fucking depressing" place one would rather not be. This paper discusses how this stigma developed, why residents incorporate this image and the low status of their neighbourhood into their accounts of what the place where they live is like, and what problems this causes. In particular, it addresses the issues of the absence of neighbourhood attachment as place attachment, even though residents "do community" all the time, and the consequences of the lack of place attachments for bringing neighbours together to get things done. It uses Charles Tilly's theory of durable inequality, especially his concept of "emulation", to reflect theoretically on the connection between place attachment, stigma and wider social structures in which people's life projects are embedded. The paper shows that, in contrast to what urban policy-makers might like to see, residents refuse to engage with their neighbourhood, as attaching themselves through neighbourhood action to "the community" would imply a recognition that they are in fact the type of person the projects are "meant" for in the dominant discourse of subsidized housing; losers with whom no-one wants to identify or be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles related to city planning. "Promoting Retail Innovation: Knowledge Flows During the Emergence of Self-Service and Supermarket Retailing in Britain," by Andrew Alexander, Gareth Shaw and Louise Curth; "The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation," by Simon Rycroft; "Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory?," by D. Bradford Hunt.

ABSTRACT. In Lindsborg, Kansas--"Little Sweden, U.S.A"--the streets are lined with shops offering "An Adventure in Swedish Tradition," and residents put on numerous festivals throughout the year highlighting Swedish folk customs. Such ethnic tourist towns have become increasingly widespread in the United States over the past thirty years. Tourists tend to perceive these places as towns where folk culture has been passed down unchanged for generations, while academics tend to dismiss residents' ethnicity as crass commercialism. Neither view is correct. Ethnicity and tradition are not static but constantly invented and reinvented. Modern folk ethnicity, among European Americans in particular, is simply the most recent incarnation of this process, one that attempts to recover ties to a specific, small-scale landscape and history. This article explores the changing nature of the narratives of ethnicity and place-based identity that the residents of Lindsborg have used to create a place for themselves in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on place attachment suggests that place identity and place dependence differ between recreationists with varying levels of specialization, recreating in different settings and with different resource proximities to their home. To further explore this relationship, we compared place attachment and recreation specialization of whitewater boaters in four different river settings. Data were collected on three rivers in the US and one in Austria. Place attachment was measured using four place identity and four place dependence items. Recreation specialization was treated as a multivariate construct consisting of the three dimensions; behavior, skill, and enduring involvement. The results of a cluster analysis revealed three specialization clusters. Two ANOVAs were performed by using place dependence and place identity as dependent variables and specialization clusters and the sampling rivers as independent variables. Place identity was not expressed differently between rivers but differed in specialization clusters. Place dependence was different between rivers but not between specialization clusters. Findings suggest that place attachment dimensions vary in river setting and specialization levels. Management should take into account that boaters exhibit different place attachment based on the specialization level and resource proximity to their home.