“Stuck” or still?: place attachment and residential mobility in an urban resource desert

Abstract What does attachment to place look like in neighborhoods marked by disinvestment? Drawing on nineteen in-depth interviews with Black public housing residents of a predominantly Black, resource-scarce urban neighborhood, this study explores the affective, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions of place attachment, the factors that drive attachment, and its relation to residential mobility desires. Findings reveal that place attachment is shaped less by physical infrastructure than by social ties, meaningful activities, and shared experiences. Residents’ connections to place are complex, as explanations for mobility desires vary across feelings of duty, affection, frustration, and grief. While some residents desire to leave for better conditions, others exhibit strong sentimental connections that motivate them to stay. This study highlights place attachment as a socially embedded process, particularly in contexts of shared struggle and physical proximity, such as public housing. Findings challenge frameworks that interpret immobility solely as the result of structural constraint or mobility solely as escape, complicating deficit-based portrayals of urban Black life by foregrounding residents’ emotions, memory, and agency. These findings advance theoretical understandings of Black placemaking, residential decision-making, and urban inequality, demonstrating the relational and recursive nature of human-place bonds under conditions shaped by racial capitalism. Findings also underscore the need for housing policy that recognizes emotional attachments to place and the social infrastructures that sustain them.