Place Attachment in Seven Areas of Tirana, Albania
Current Urban Studies, 2019, 7, 206-227 http://www.scirp.org/journal/cus ISSN Online: 2328-4919 ISSN Print: 2328-4900 Place Attachment in Seven Areas of Tirana, Albania Peter Nientied1,2*, Sotir Dhamo1,2, Dorina Papa1,2, Merita Toska1,2 1Polis University, Tirana, Albania 2Co-PLAN Institute for Habitat Development, Tirana, Albania How to cite this paper: Nientied, P., Abstract Dhamo, S., Papa, D., & Toska, M. (2019). Place Attachment in Seven Areas of Tirana, Little is known about place attachment in the Balkans. This study aims to Albania. Current Urban Studies, 7, 206-227. start filling this gap. After a contextualization of place attachment studies in https://doi.org/10.4236/cus.2019.72010 the Balkans and its relevance for research and practice, a brief review of Received: April 25, 2019 theory is offered. Then the methodology of the empirical part of the study is Accepted: June 17, 2019 clarified. Over 300 citizens living in seven different neighborhoods of Tirana Published: June 20, 2019 have been interviewed on place attachment issues such as sense of belonging, familiarity, self-identification and neighborhood experience. The results of Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. the empirical study show that place attachment in Tirana is quite positive. This work is licensed under the Creative The findings and analysis indicate that place attachment indicators do not Commons Attribution International vary significantly according to educational level, gender and age, but do cor- License (CC BY 4.0). relate with length of residence. It also appeared that place attachment indica- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ tors are higher in well-established neighborhoods compared to the new Open Access high-rise areas.
[Show full text]