Lindsay McCunn's presentation at the Urban Depth & Autonomy Workshops: Exploring Spatial Navigation, Place Imageability and Sense of Place in Urban Settings

1. ExploringSpatialNavigation,PlaceImageability,and
SenseofPlaceinUrbanSettings
AutonomyandUrbanDepthWorkshop|LondonMetropolitanUniversity
Lindsay J. McCunn, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychology
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, BC Canada

2. Background
• With more people residing in cities worldwide, questions about
which attributes in an urban fabric offer people a positive,
healthful, and stimulating experience—a ‘sense of place’—are
timely and prudent
• A multidisciplinary body of research has defined sense of place
(SOP) as a composition of beliefs, emotions, and behavioral
commitments that manifest as a feeling of specialness for a
physical setting
• In 2011, I defended my MSc thesis testing whether SOP and
affective organizational commitment (AOC) are perceived as
distinct psychological constructs for residents in three urban
neighbourhoods
• Constructs were correlated (but not so much so to be redundant)...
feelings toward neighbourhoods seem to be related to physical
attributes along with social attributes
• McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2014). Interrelations between sense of place,
organizational commitment, and green neighborhoods. Cities, 41, 20-29

3. Background
• Later, in 2015, I defended my doctoral dissertation titled “A
Conceptual Framework of Sense of Place: Examining the Roles of
Spatial Navigation and Place Imageability”
• I wanted to expand upon an existing three-dimensional framework of
sense of place (SOP) first put forward by Jorgensen and Stedman in
2001
• Place attachment
• Place identity
• Place dependence
• Research using this psychological construct is often done in
residential contexts with little attention paid to physical variables
• So, I wanted to investigate whether spatial navigation (SN) strategy and
place imageability (PI) associated with SOP in urban neighborhoods
• I thought that legibility might be an antecedent to SOP, along with
navigating places in relation to the self (i.e., egocentric)
• I chose to do three small studies...

4. Study1:Does
Navigational
StrategyAssociate
withSenseofPlace?
• Aim: Compare participants’ SOP levels for recalled
neighbourhoods with their verbalizations of allocentric and
egocentric navigational strategies
• Participants: Undergraduate and community members
• Method: Standardized SOP scale in a questionnaire and a
protocol analysis task in an interview
• Similar to going on a walkthrough of a neighbourhood (in your
mind) during a structured interview about the specific places
that you come across per SOP condition (i.e., strong, neutral,
weak)

5. Study2:DoesPlace
Imageabilityin
CognitiveMaps
Associatewith
SenseofPlace?
• Aim:Test whether PI associates with participants’ SOP for
same recalled urban neighbourhood settings
• Participants:The same as Study 1
• Method: Cognitive mapping task
• Participants drew their cognitive maps of three urban
neighbourhood settings so we could count the number (and
type) of PI features per SOP condition

6. Study3:ACommunity
Investigationofthe
ProposedConceptual
FrameworkofSenseof
Place
• Aim: Measure SOP toward, and navigational strategies in,
three areas of a local community that differ in PI
• This time, data is from a non-recalled environment
• Participants: Current residents of an architecturally and
socioeconomically diverse urban neighbourhood
• Method: Standardized SOP scale and open-ended spatial
navigation items asked in a paper-and-pencil questionnaire
at a public community event
• Participants walked around three “stations” to look at
photos of the neighbourhood areas differing in PI and
complete the questionnaire along the way

7. SelectedResults
fromStudies1&
2
• Participants verbalized more of both egocentric and
allocentric strategies for places where their SOP was strong
(compared to weak or neutral levels of SOP)
• No significant differences between SN strategies within SOP
conditions
• Sketch maps revealed that experiencing strong SOP for a
place was associated with recalling more PI features in it
• Especially paths and landmarks
• When SOP was strong, individuals found it simpler to recall PI
features during the cognitive map task
• Detailed results in the publication:
• McCunn, L. J. & Gifford, R. (2017). Spatial navigation and place
imageability in sense of place. Cities, 74, 208-218

8. ANoteAbout
NodesinStudy2
• More nodes were drawn in cognitive maps for settings about
which participants felt strong levels of SOP
• This connects with other literature suggesting that memory
formation, consolidation, and retrieval may be strengthened
in “places of pause”
• Because decisions about direction and destination can easily be
made at urban nodes, such as plazas, squares, and so on, they
may offer opportunities to experience heightened attention and
perceive surroundings with more clarity
• As well as contribute to the development a sense of place

9. SelectedResults
fromStudy3
• Findings currently under review
• Community residents’ SOP scores were higher for the
neighbourhood area with the most PI features (compared to
areas with moderate and low PI)
• Although Study 1 showed that both egocentric and allocentric
strategies were verbalized similarly when recalling settings
that differed in SOP, Study 3 indicated that more allocentric
strategies were reported within each setting differing in PI
• Future research using a revised framework of SOP should
account for whether a setting is recalled versus currently lived or
and experienced regularly... and whether SOP or PI is the
independent variable
• Indeed, participants who reported more familiarity with a setting
stated more allocentric navigational cues in written and verbal
descriptions of their cognitive maps

10. Concluding
Thoughts
• Overall, the work generally contributes to:
• The recent growth of interest in SOP (and in finding new
variables that associate with it) at the neighbourhood level
• Knowledge that SOP, SN, and PI associate with each other at this
scale
• A diversification of social scientific research methods used for
examining SOP
• Assisting social scientists and planners in clarifying where and
how SOP may develop for people in urban neighbourhoods
• And what features are often recalled in these places (and how we
tend to navigate them) in our cognitive maps