Croft, Charlie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9194-2604 (2021) “Different cities, different stories”? Sense of place and its implications for residents’ use of public spaces in the heritage city of York. Doctoral thesis, York St John University. Downloaded from: http://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/5235/ Research at York St John (RaY) is an institutional repository. It supports the principles of open access by making the research outputs of the University available in digital form. Copyright of the items stored in RaY reside with the authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full text items free of charge, and may download a copy for private study or non-commercial research. For further reuse terms, see licence terms governing individual outputs. Institutional Repository Policy Statement RaY Research at the University of York St John For more information please contact RaY at [email protected] “Different cities, different stories”? Sense of place and its implications for residents’ use of public spaces in the heritage city of York. Charlie David John Hugh Croft Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy York St John University Business School January 2021 - 2 - The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material. Any reuse must comply with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and any licence under which this copy is released. © 2021 York St John University and Charlie David John Hugh Croft The right of Charlie David John Hugh Croft to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. - 3 - Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Brendan Paddison, Dr Judith Parks and Professor Chris Bailey for all their help and encouragement throughout the research process. Thanks are due to Fiona Himsworth, Jane Shipley and Claire Wilton for facilitating my participation in York Learning classes and to Mora Scaife, Andy Laslett and Dave Meigh for introductions to the community settings where I was able to recruit the research respondents. I am grateful to Michael Hawtin for graphics support in recreating the visual representations of the go-along interviews. I am indebted to colleagues and fellow researchers too numerous to mention who have taken an interest in this project and been willing to discuss it with me and to contribute ideas. Finally, I would like to thank all the participants who gave their time to take part in this study and inspired me with their stories. In grateful memory of Professor Steve Watson who inspired me to set out on my research journey. - 4 - Abstract Focusing on the embodied encounter with place, this study investigates how sense of place manifests itself for residents of the heritage city of York and explores its implications for how individuals use the city’s public spaces. Recognising the significance of the public realm for civic engagement, the research seeks insights into how residents may be engaged more effectively in debates about the city’s future. The study views sense of place through the lens of stories, considering the interplay between the “big stories”, told from positions of authority, and the “small stories” of the individual’s everyday experience of place. The study takes a qualitative approach employing bricolage. It identifies the “big stories” of York in writings about the city and in social media whilst the “small stories” of everyday encounter with public spaces are captured in fieldwork, involving map drawing and “go-along” interviews, through which respondents address the question of what York means to them. The study draws on scholarship concerned with assemblage and, in particular, the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to elaborate a concept of sense of place as assemblage with three dimensions: the affective / sensorial, the political, and the temporal / mnemonic. Sense of place, seen as an opening up of oneself to the potentiality of the encounter with space, is characterised as a disrupting concept. In considering the implications of sense of place for the individual’s use of public spaces, the study employs the notion of “urban nomad” to describe how the individual moves in smooth space, in spaces of “becoming” that are “in- between” the points of the city’s topology designated by its “big stories”. It is argued that, through reterritorialising the big stories of the city, the urban nomad uses them as a resource in the working out of their individual subjectivity. - 5 - TABLE OF CONTENTS List of figures..................................................................................................... 7 List of tables ...................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................ 9 1.1 Aim of the study ...................................................................................... 9 1.2 Some key terms ...................................................................................... 9 1.3 The motivation for the research ............................................................ 12 1.4 Stories - big and small .......................................................................... 16 1.5 The setting for the research .................................................................. 21 1.6 The research questions ........................................................................ 26 1.7 Contribution to knowledge .................................................................... 27 1.8 Structure of the thesis ........................................................................... 28 Chapter 2: Literature Review ............................................................. 29 2.1 Stories .................................................................................................. 30 2.2 The person-place relationship ............................................................... 50 2.3 The embodied experience of place ....................................................... 61 2.4 Conclusion ...........................................................................................103 Chapter 3: Methodology ................................................................... 106 3.1 Research strategy ...............................................................................106 3.2 Positionality .........................................................................................112 3.3 Research approach .............................................................................114 3.4 Research methods ..............................................................................117 3.5 Data analysis .......................................................................................142 Chapter 4: The “Big Stories” of York .............................................. 146 4.1 Writings about York .............................................................................146 4.2 Heritage versus development ..............................................................149 4.3 Subaltern Voices? ...............................................................................152 4.4 The view of the wider population .........................................................154 4.5 Social media ........................................................................................157 4.6 Concluding thoughts ............................................................................160 Chapter 5: The “Small Stories” of Embodied Encounter with York’s Public Spaces ..................................................... 162 5.1 An everyday encounter with public space ............................................163 5.2 Place as “intensive” rather than “extensive” .........................................170 5.3 The virtual place ..................................................................................182 5.4 Sense of place as assemblage ............................................................187 - 6 - Chapter 6: Sense of Place - The Affective / Sensorial ................... 190 6.1 Three go-alongs ..................................................................................191 6.2 Concluding thoughts ............................................................................197 Chapter 7: Sense of Place - The Temporal / Mnemonic ................ 199 7.1 The “living present” ..............................................................................200 7.2 Memory ...............................................................................................204 7.3 A wider world consciousness ...............................................................214 7.4 Some concluding thoughts...................................................................218 Chapter 8: Sense of Place - The Political ....................................... 220 8.1 Two go-alongs .....................................................................................220 8.2 The life of the body in public space ......................................................229 Chapter 9: Drawing Together the Strands ...................................... 232 9.1 Sense of place as disrupting concept ..................................................232 Chapter 10: Sense of Place and the Use