There are a plethora of concepts describing the relationship between people and spatial settings, but
Sense of Place (SOP) is perhaps the most general.
Our research uses an attitude framework to assess
whether SOP encompasses place concepts commonly
addressed in environmental psychology: Attachment, Identity, and Dependence. It is useful to consider sense of place as an attitude towards a spatial
setting especially since the constructs noted above
share strong similarities to the a¡ective, cognitive
and conative components of attitude, respectively.
An attitude approach o¡ers place research a number of bene¢ts: (1) organization of rather disorga-
nized constructs, (2) linkage to established
literature, and (3) established research methods.
Sense of Place has been referred to as an over-
arching concept which subsumes other concepts describing relationships between human beings and spatial settings (Shamai, 1991). In general, SOP is
the meaning attached to a spatial setting by a person or group. Tuan (1979) has provided the most oftcited de¢nition, declaring that a place is a center of
meaning or ¢eld of care that emphasizes human
emotions and relationships. Ryden (1993) added that
`a place . . . is much more than a point in space . . .
but takes in the meanings which people assign to
that landscape through the process of living in it'
(pp. 37^38). Accordingly, SOP is not imbued in the
physical setting itself, but resides in human interpretations of the setting.
For theorists such as Canter (1991) places repre-
sent a con£uence of cognitions, emotions and actions organized around human agency. In this
respect, Canter recognized that places could be conceptualized as an integrated system comprising three attitude domains. He further ventured that
developing an understanding of the processes involved in the integration of these domains would