S Sense of Place Goran Erfani Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK Synonyms Place attachment; Place dependence; Place iden- tity; Place satisfaction; Sense of belonging Definition/Description Sense of place is a dynamic concept that refers to the emotional and psychological meanings, values, and feelings individuals and communities attribute to places. These attributions are often influenced by socio-cultural and historical set- tings, reflecting the evolving nature of human relationships with places in human geography. Introduction Sense of place is often used in human geography, urban studies and planning, environmental and social psychology, and other social sciences to explain human–place relations. However, the con- ceptualization and application of sense of place may vary by discipline, theoretical orientation, and empirical methods. In human geography, sense of place refers to all various meanings developed by an individual or a group of humans for a place(s) over time. Sense of place requires an understanding of “place” as a space linked with subjective meanings that humans develop through their personal and socio-cultural practices (see works of Tuan, 1975, 1977; Relph, 1976; Buttimer & Seamon, 1980). Environmental psy- chologists draw more attention to the “psycholog- ical processes” of assigning meanings to places in human–place relations, while urban planners often refer to sense of place as a reference value in their planning objectives to improve the quality of life of local communities. In landscape and environmental studies, sense of place is used to highlight the ecological and socio-cultural values attributed to places. Numerous models and conceptual frameworks have been developed to conceptualize the human– place relations in human geography and the sub- disciplines of urban and social geography, or cultural and political ecology (Convery et al., 2014; Pierce et al., 2011; Raymond et al., 2021). For example, environmental psychologists Scannell and Gifford (2010) have proposed a “person–process–place” framework to compre- hensively and systematically explain the mean- ings attributed to specific locations. Social environmental geographers Flurina Wartmann and others (Wartmann et al., 2021) have suggested a multilevel model that conceptualizes landscapes and human–nature relationships, with the inten- tion of informing planning practices and © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 B. Warf (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Human Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_277-1