A few quick thoughts about place attachment and kindness

Turn your head and cough

A few weeks ago, I had a specialist medical appointment. I live in Canada so at this time of year it’s standard practice to place a sign outside the door of such offices asking people to remove their boots before entering. Everyone hates doing this as the footwear area is usually sloshy and requires some fine ballet to negotiate. As well, for reasons that are unclear to me, one rickety stool is provided for those who are less adept at balancing on one foot while removing boots.

But the reasons for complying are obvious and involve basic civility. After struggling out of my own boots and into the waiting room, I noticed that there was only one other person waiting, her boots still on and water pooling around her feet and trailing across the floor. Ok, no big deal I thought to myself. Everyone is different. Maybe she’s embarrassed by feet. Another sign asked politely whether those who had respiratory symptoms could wear a mask. As we all know, there’s some weird contention around this with a sizeable proportion of our population having become trapped in the 19^th century before the advent of germ theory. Booted woman, who was right in my slipstream in the small waiting room, began to cough and wheeze and blow heartily into a tissue. She was clearly sick, and she was unmasked. A few days after trudging out of the office with wet socks, I was sick too. It’s a mug’s game trying to figure out whom to blame when you get sick, but, not unreasonably, I laid my angry blame on my waiting room companion for a little while. I’ve thought about that person surprisingly often, and not so much with rancour (ok a little as I managed to pass my sickness along to our new baby who was also sick and unhappy for a few days) but more with curiosity. In one way or another, the world is inundated with incivilities, whether coming from powerful politicians who swear, hurl insults at one another and mendaciously fracture society for the most selfish of reasons, or everyday people arguing with one another on social media or in real life over matters both ridiculously trivial or immensely important. As an environmental psychologist, I’ve wondered about how the settings of our lives affect these kinds of behaviours. I’ve wondered whether there are ways to design environments for civility. I think that one of the reasons that we treat one another so badly has to do with fear and anxiety. When the world has become so troubled that there are new reasons for fear every day, it isn’t surprising that our collective mental state has become frayed. I think another factor in our collective turning away from one another might have to do with our feelings of loss of agency. We are not only threatened by world events but we also often feel helpless. Sometimes I hear this helplessness in the voices of friends and family who tell me that they are rationing their exposure to the news to cope. It seems a reasonable thing to do, but it does smack of resignation—a sad giving up on the world.

Getting back to my visit to the specialist, I wonder whether those feelings of helplessness might be exacerbated by the greater context of the visit. When we go to see our medical people, there is a soft requirement that we surrender agency. We jettison dignity, submit to the requirement that we disrobe in front of strangers, allow ourselves to become not much more than fleshy bodies devoid of will, autonomy or personhood. So, if I’m right, it isn’t that surprising that we might be at our worst in doctors’ waiting rooms. The more useful question might be whether other kinds of settings might flip things around. Can we design spaces where we feel hope and agency? If we could do this well, might other useful attributes like empathy and kindness come along for the ride?

Place attachment and nationalism

I’ve been stunned (and I would have to say heartened) by the visceral reaction that my fellow Canadians have had to threats from abroad. We tend to be a laid-back, tolerant and, yes, polite society, and it takes quite a bit to rile us up. But an existential threat to our nationhood by our unstable authoritarian neighbour to the south has, in a remarkably short period of time, changed us. The last time I remember this level of nationalist fervour in Canada was for something much less important—a Canada-Russia hockey tournament in 1972 that so captured Canada’s imagination that schools were closed so that we could watch the games. I’m a little leery of nationalism because it can fuel xenophobia and violence but, in this case, so far, it has generated a fierce sense of loyalty and attachment to country that we will probably need to weather the next few years.

In the context of my abiding interests in attachment, the sudden re-orientation of our citizens to their own country challenges my biologically-based understanding of attachment that it is something that accretes slowly over time and with repeated exposure. But here, just as with my sudden discovery of a place in England, the sounds of whose destruction would have fallen on my mother’s teenaged ears, place attachment was immediate, emotional, and enduring. I’m both fascinated and horrified by this turn of events, but I won’t look away and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it.

What I’m up to

My life has undergone a major re-orientation recently as I’m spending much more time (looking after our baby daughter), speaking, writing and consulting and much less time on matters academic (something had to give….). I’m working on a major consulting project related to housing issues and place attachment that I’ll say more about later.

My talk schedule is below. Some of these events are open to all so if you’re in the neighbourhood and would like to talk to me, come visit!

Conscious Cities Baltimore: Shaping intentional and equitable spaces in Baltimore and beyond. March 21, 2 pm EST both live and online. Register here

This event is still shaping up but looks like it will be great. The Conscious Cities movement is something I’ve been attached to for quite a long time and I’m looking forward to applying it to the great city of Baltimore.

Shift+’25 Carmichael Lecture: Minding the street: What we can learn from psychology and neuroscience about building vibrant, vital cities. March 27, 630 PM EST. Live, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Lord Nelson Hotel.

This is both a public lecture and a part of Nova Scotia’s planning conference. I’ll be talking about my favourite topic: how to make cities great using the tools of psychology and neuroscience.

Mind-Body-Space Global Symposium: Environmental Psychology. July 1, 9 AM CET, Live, Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau, Barcelona.

My keynote at this conference is just one small part of an extravaganza in Barcelona with lots of great content and excursions. Registration still open. Take a look here

City stress, place attachment and community engagement. Inspire Neighborhoods Conference, September 12, time TBA. Fort Wayne, Indiana

The date for the talk is fixed but details are still TBA as the event develops. What I can tell you is that I’ll be talking about a project I’m undertaking with the city of Fort Wayne that focuses on the impact that community involvement has on management of urban stresses.

First International Conference on Crossmodal Congruence Design: Place Attachment and Home: Sense, Emotion, and Memory. Live September 26, 2:15 PM CET, Politecnico Di Milano Aula Magna.

As the name suggests, this is a new event and includes a colourful cast of characters! Details pending.

That’s all for now!

I think that will be all of my travel for 2025 unless someone can offer outstanding babysitting as part of a talk package or can wait for me until sometime in 2026. I’m supposed to be a Stay-At-Home-Dad (SAHD) and I’m kinda failing. Baby is complaining loudly. She says I’m biting off more than I can chew. But she only has one tooth. What does she know??