Bridging the Gap between Planning and Environmental Psychology: An application of sense of place for visioning of public policy

Abstract

This paper aimed to explore a new methodology for vision making and sharing of a local municipality. The study explored using the residents’ sense of place as a key element of the vision for the local town in order to ease the conflict or discomfort that can arise among diverse populations of merged municipalities. A method named Visioning with Sense of Place was developed for this study. Analyses identified that the visioning process stimulated the participants to develop a broader sense of place with the new town. Keywords: Municipal merger, vision, sense of place, correspondence analysis © 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK.. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, UniversitiTeknologi MARA, Malaysia.