In recent years, community planning that incorporates the opinions of residents has become popular in the fields of architecture and urban planning. At the same time, place attachments embodied by people have been recognized as an important element of planning, and past researches on attachment are being used in community development. Attachment has many factors, but daily behavior and personal experience are proven to be very important. However, most previous studies have only analyzed the personal attributes and environmental characteristics, and few have examined places of deep attachment with a focus on personal experiences and actions based on memories.
Therefore, in this study, based on an interview survey, we studied the places that subjects had attachments to, along with the personal experiences, behaviors, and reasons behind those attachments. The aim is to clarify the experiences that tend to lead to these attachments and the ages at which they form. In addition, utilizing a sketch map survey, we studied how place attachments are drawn in a sketch map, and considered how various factors, such as environment, experiences, and with whom they experienced, affect those attachments. By analyzing the attachments from the viewpoint of experience aspects based on memories, we gained a deeper understanding of the patterns of place attachment.
To study the deep relationships between people and places from the experience aspects, in this study, the experiences are limited to those in everyday life. The definition of place attachment is “a place for which you feel nostalgic when you think deeply or consider it in your daily life from the past until now, or a place which would make you feel lonely if you were to lose it”.
The experience of creating attachment changed from playing to talking as the age progressed. Playing tended to create strong attachments but talking tended to be related to weak attachments. Playing and interacting with nature during elementary school are particularly important as it was easy to create attachments. In addition, it was found that striving for something during the time of being a junior high school student or older often produced attachments, even if it was not an enjoyable memory. Additionally, detours from the route to school during high school tended to create many attachments. Furthermore, it was found that even if an experience was not remarkable, feelings of empathy and remembering the experience with people who shared it tended to cause strong attachments.
A sketch map survey revealed that attachment is deeply related to the environment, experience, and human factors, and that there are various types of attachment to places. In the sketch maps, it was found that the way of drawing changes depending on how attachment is formed. Also, the amount of information drawn on urban and suburban sketch maps was small, but the sketch maps of the countryside were rich in nature, in which the environment and various experiences arising from it were frequently drawn, and continuous.
By analyzing attachment from the viewpoint of experience aspects, we gained a deeper understanding of the patterns of place attachment based on memories.
