People-place bonds are crucial for urban planning, fostering care, safety, and stewardship within neighborhoods. These bonds have been studied extensively, primarily under the concept of place attachment. Place attachment has been shown to offer numerous positive benefits, such as improved well-being, social behavior, and environmental engagement. The broad body of literature has identified several key components influencing place attachment, such as homeownership, age, and length of residence. Our study expands this understanding by measuring people-place bonds not only through place attachment, but also through place making, emphasizing the agency of residents in shaping their neighborhoods. We used data from a large-scale online survey completed by 5356 respondents across five European cities: Brussels, Geneva, Hamburg, Turin, and Zurich. We conducted exploratory factor analysis and k-means clustering to identify distinct population profiles with various people-place bonds. The analysis revealed three profiles of urban dwellers, affluent place-making internationals , disadvantaged locals , and affluent place-attached locals , which are characterized by distinct sociodemographic attributes and types of emotional bonds with places. Our findings challenge the traditional emphasis on individual variables (e.g., homeownership, length of residence) as predictors of people-place bonds. Instead, we discovered that combinations of variables, specifically socioeconomic attributes, education level, perceived safety, and migration background, better reflect the complexities associated with how people form emotional bonds with places. The distribution of these profiles varied considerably across the five cities, reflecting local contextual differences. We discuss these variations and their implications for urban planning, highlighting inclusive approaches that meet diverse needs and strengthen people-place bonds. • Place making and place attachment emerge as distinct people-place bonds. • Clustering reveals three distinct profiles of social features and place relations. • These clusters are unevenly distributed across five European cities. • Homeownership policies may explain cultural context and cross-city differences.
Baumann et al. (Thu,) studied this question.