What are Socio-Cultural Place Studies?
Places can not only be understood as physical structures or as result of physical planning. How we experience a place and what meaning we attach to a place determined who we are, where we come from and who we meet. Moreover, the dominant social practices developing in a place, give the place cultural meaning. This results in a sense of belonging for some and a sense of exclusion for others. As such, there exists perhaps as many notions of the place as there are local people.
Using socio-cultural place studies, these images, positions and practices can be analysed to provide a better basis for decisions about what a place may be. Socio-cultural place studies, where a place is considered a social and cultural construction and a 'local community product', can provide valuable knowledge for use in work on local place making and development. Important concepts in such analyses are place use (practice), place images (positions and representations) and place interests (power relations).
Socio-Cultural Place Studies Bring New Dimensions...
Socio-cultural place study bring new dimensions into local place making and development in relation to historic, physical or aesthetic place analyses. Such traditional place studies are primarily based on registrations of landscape, buildings and other physical structures. The purpose has been to improve the aesthetic and functional qualities of cities and towns. Through conferences and courses, extensive guidance material. And assisted by architect and landscape architect consultants, traditional place studies where prepared by increasing number of municipalities throughout Scandinavia. They use methods of analysis of variation through time, i.e historic development, and through space, i.e characteristics of a place.
 |
See link below for preliminary 2019
40p draft guidance in English |
The social and cultural aspects of a place is rarely mentioned in such traditional place studies, in line with what was intended. In guidance issued by the Norwegian Environment Ministry it states that; 'As a rule, [traditional physical] place studies will constitute a limited knowledge base for [spatial] planning' (Environment Ministry 1993).
What traditionally has been perceived as physical spatial planning, affects socio economic groups differently, have different symbolic meaning for different groups and are subject to conflicts of interest, both among professionals and throughout a community. These experiences, views and interests are important to clarify, both in strategic long term local planning, and in the more short term or local detailed planning in the form of zoning, master and building plans. In the latter type of planning, socio-cultural place studies can offer an important contribution.
It is also possible to use socio-cultural place studies in locations that have an unfavourable local place image, and where different participants join forces to try to 'rebuild' a local place image, or construct a new one. In such instances it will be important to identify the different notions or images of a place, and which participants relate to what notion or image. The perspectives and methods described in this guidance, is useful in preparing such studies as well as in preparing a new or rebuilt local place image.
Socio-Cultural Place Studies Can Increase the Social Capital of a Place
Socio-cultural place studies can mobilise local communities, by establishing a dialog between participants and make the various participants aware of each others roles and positions within a local community. Socio-cultural place studies can increase the social capital of a place, by establishing links, contacts and relationships criss crossing social and cultural lines.
Socio-cultural place studies can also uncover long established power relations within a community, or newly established relations that may have a major impact on local place making and development.
It is important to stress that socio-cultural place studies are not the same as traditional community participation. The origin of participation in a Scandinavian physical planning practice, is that different groups and actors have different standpoints and interests, but that these participants are often involved relatively late in the preparation drafting a development plan, in line with current planning legislation, practice and guidance. Traditional community participation further reflects a different understanding of place and uses a narrower variety of methods than is available in socio-cultural place studies.
While traditional community participation reflects stakeholders' views about a place or a place's development, socio-cultural place studies consider a local place as a product, and a mixture, of different participants' and groups' beliefs, values and interests. An important difference is that socio-cultural place studies also consider the role of planners, politicians, developers and the media, i.e groups that are active participants and groups that set the agenda in local place making and development.
Why Do We Need Socio-Cultural Place
Studies?
We live in a society where there are increasing demands for transparency. Decision making should be transparent, and different stakeholders should get insight into processes that determine the parameters for their daily life or business. At the same time, society has become more diverse socially and culturally. The multicultural perspective is also about cultural differences and lifestyles that can combine or break up traditional social categories such as class and gender. One example is new consumer patterns, that are very important in local development. This is evident in gentrified neighbourhoods such as Grünerløkka, where many new kinds of shops and services have emerged that target new lifestyle groups, in what was traditionally a working class neighbourhood of inner Oslo. One of the objectives of socio-cultural place studies is to capture this diversity and analyse its importance in urban development.
Contents of Socio-Cultural Place
Studies
The basis of socio-cultural place studies is that there exists different notions of a place's qualities, specialities or weaknesses, and not least about how the place should be developed in the future. The images of a place are formed by the perspectives or interests the place is viewed from. Different stakeholders may have the same or diverging understanding of the potential of a place, what kind of development that is desirable and what should be prioritised. Socio-cultural place studies particularly emphasise how different players use a place, what images they have of the place today and in the future, and what interests are related to this. As such, the stakeholder perspective is essential.
Methods of Socio-Cultural Place Studies
The choice of method, i.e the implementation of socio-cultural place studies, is determined by the intent and the purpose of the study, and by the size of the place. Key questions are: - How will different stakeholders' stances and positions in relation to images or associations with a place be identified? - How can one uncover different stakeholders' use of a place and interests related to this? - What methods are suitable to uncover issues covered by these three approaches?
