Combining sense of place theory with the ecosystem services concept: empirical insights and reflections from a participatory mapping study

Context River landscapes represent hotspots for biodiversity and ecosystem services used and embraced by human agents. Changes in river landscapes are subjectively perceived by people and can be assessed through the lenses of cultural ecosystem services (CES) and sense of place (SOP). Objectives This study aims to assess people–place relationships in a river landscape by integrating SOP theory and the CES concept and critically reflecting on their interplay. Research objectives relate to meanings and attachments attributed by citizens to places and the influence of the physical environment and socioeconomic settings. Methods We employed a spatially meaningful place indicator in a public participation GIS survey, combining meanings elucidated through a free listing exercise and multiple-choice questions. Statistical analyses were employed to investigate relationships between meanings, place attachment, and environmental and social variables. Results The results showed that (1) place meaning assessments can complement place attachment data by enhancing the understanding of relationships to biophysical and socioeconomic variables, and (2) combinations of both assessment approaches for place meanings showed that CESs were reflected in many free listed meaning types, dominantly related to forms or practices, but neglect relational values, such as “Heimat” (i.e., in German expression of the long-standing connection to an area) or memories. Conclusions This paper explicates synergies between SOP theory and CES concept. CES research offers insights from spatial assessments, while SOP research provides theoretical depth regarding relational values linked to CES. This paper critically reflects the ostensible consent of understanding SOP as a CES and proposes considering SOP as an overarching theory for CES assessment.

An Update of Third Place Theory

Responding to a perceived decline in social capital in America, sociologists Oldenburg and Brissett offer the third place as a solution. While traditionally defined as social gathering places in the physical environment, recent studies have demonstrated that virtual environments may also serve as third places. This study analyzes the social media website Facebook to identify current socializing patterns. The goals of the present study are twofold: 1) to examine the characteristics of third places in virtual contexts as evidenced in existing literature and 2) to identify new third place characteristics that illustrate the evolution of third place characteristics using Facebook as a model. Findings provide support for updating third place characteristics in order to encompass both virtual and physical environments. Results reinforce the idea that present-day socializing trends better represent a different paradigm than existing theories and provide definitions for new evolving third place characteristics.

Transforming everyday public places into thriving third places

<p>By exploring interactions between architecture, urban design and sociology, this thesis seeks to highlight the disconnection between these disciplines and how they can be integrated into a robust framework. The central question driving this investigation is how integrating third place theory with urban design principles can support and nurture communities within the public realm. In order to achieve this, the thesis outlines third place theory in conjunction with the core urban design principles and highlights the benefits and value by bringing these together. The outcome is an integrated novel framework that effectively brings these bodies of knowledge together.</p>

Transforming everyday public places into thriving third places

<p>By exploring interactions between architecture, urban design and sociology, this thesis seeks to highlight the disconnection between these disciplines and how they can be integrated into a robust framework. The central question driving this investigation is how integrating third place theory with urban design principles can support and nurture communities within the public realm. In order to achieve this, the thesis outlines third place theory in conjunction with the core urban design principles and highlights the benefits and value by bringing these together. The outcome is an integrated novel framework that effectively brings these bodies of knowledge together.</p>

Primal world beliefs correlate strongly but differentially with character strengths

Primal world beliefs–primals–are a category of beliefs about the overall character of the world (e.g., the world is a safe place). Theory suggests that such beliefs drive personality development–or at least reflect personality differences, such as character strengths. We examined the relationships of primals with character strengths among 1122 German-speaking adults. The primary primal good explained the most variance in the majority of character strengths, especially hope, spirituality, zest, gratitude, curiosity, and leadership. Including specific secondary (e.g., safe, enticing, alive) and tertiary primals (e.g., beautiful, needs me, funny) often yielded better predictions, but, with few exceptions, increments were typically smaller than that of the primary primal. We recommend including these primals in positive psychology interventions and describe three couplings of primals and character strengths that may prove especially fruitful for future research and practice.

The Nobel Laureate Georg von Békésy’s Hearing Theory

After Békésy the stapes base moves around two axes: for weaker sounds - rotates around its transverse axis; in case of a strong sound - it moves around its longitudinal axis. Békésy’s place theory cannot alone explain the frequency-distinguishing ability of the ear. However, the existence of active amplification further sharpens the frequency-analysing ability of the cochlea. In addition, the different frequency sensitivity of afferent nerve fibres of inner hair cells synergizes with the mechanisms above. Peaked resonance curves are consequences of different threshold sensitivities of nerves connecting to individual hair cells. The frequency, which belongs to the lowest stimulus threshold, is called the characteristic frequency of a nerve. This place assignment of nerve frequencies are formed by the following mechanism in the cochlea. The place of amplitude maxima of progressive waves excited in the basilar membrane shows slight frequency dependence. The mechanism of active amplification forming in outer hair cells amplifies and sharpens the resonances of the basilar membrane. In 1961, nobleman Georg von Békésy received the Nobel Prize in Medicine: “for his discoveries of the physical mechanisms of stimulation within the cochlea”.

The spatial reach of financial centres: An empirical investigation of interurban trade in capital market services

This article investigates the spatial patterns of interurban trade in capital market services by analysing 16,324 trade links involving advisers and clients in the Visegrád Four plus Austria and their counter-parties worldwide between 2000 and 2014. We aim to address a gap in the research on financial centres and interurban trade by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between the complexity of services and the size of market areas across which they are traded. We utilise recent contributions to Central Place Theory (CPT), which provide us with suitably general models of interurban trade applicable to financial services. The key proposition of CPT in this respect is that more complex services are traded across larger market areas, thus translating into a further spatial reach of service centres. Given that these propositions are derived at a very general level, we rely on global city theory for explaining the underlying causal mechanisms in the context of capital market services. Our analysis examines the geography of adviser–client trade links to investigate how spatial patterns of interurban trade in capital market services are shaped by the characteristics of the services traded. We uncover evidence that more complex and larger transactions are associated with higher distance between clients and financial services providers. This in turn means that more complex services are traded across larger market areas. While clients in Central and Eastern Europe can generally find suitable providers for less complex capital market services locally, they often rely on financial services providers globally for the most complex transactions.

Mobility, Time, and Value

This chapter analyzes the high-stakes of the Gaokao, which, together with its undetermined outcome, forms a pillar of its fatefulness. It talks about how people see the exam as something consequential since it enables them to migrate from rural to urban places, expanding their capacity to realize important life projects like marriage, childbirth, and eldercare. It also emphasizes the value to people of the migration from rural to urban living, which relates intimately to how they perceive it as a journey toward modernity and national development. The chapter refers to the central-place theory that models China's complex system of interconnected, hierarchically nested regions and markets and corresponds closely with people's native understanding of place. It recounts how urban hierarchy assumed its current form after the commercial revolution of the Tang-Song transition in the ninth to thirteenth centuries.

Linguistic landscapes as discursive frame

Previous research on the Linguistic Landscapes of Chinatowns has highlighted the perceptions and experiences of long-term residents (Lou, 2009, 2016; Amos, 2016). To explore Chinatown in the eyes of newly arrived migrants, this paper presents a study of the Linguistic Landscape of the Triangle de Choisy, the Chinatown in Paris. Drawing upon Scollon and Scollon’s geosemiotic framework (2003) and Augé’s place theory (1995), it analyzes 130 photographs of the field and four interviews with newly arrived Chinese migrants. It is found that the Linguistic Landscape of the Chinatown constructs a coherent semiotic aggregate for the newcomers as an identifiable, relational, and historical transnational space that helps to orient them in a new country. Thus, this study illustrates how the Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown could serve as structured and structuring discursive frame (Coupland & Garrett, 2010) in the lives of new migrants.

Central Place Theory and the Emergence of Floating Markets in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

This research re-examines Walter Christaller (1933)’s central place theory paradigm to explain the emergence of a network of floating markets in the Mekong River Delta’s dense network of rivers and canals. Because road transportation is underdeveloped, floating markets play an important role for local people. They provide access to transportation and opportunities to trade, especially for the region’s diverse agricultural products. Furthermore, the floating markets support inland infrastructures. This research challenges Christaller’s (1933) assumptions about population thresholds and geographical range, and Mulligan et al.’s (2012) understanding of interaction among consumer choices, company aggregation and functional hierarchy. It finds that riverine traders employ flexible transaction strategies.