Places of wellbeing between materiality and emotionality
Vera DENZER, University of Leipzig / Institute of Geography, Germany
Inner city green and open spaces like parks and brownfields can contribute to subjective wellbeing and quality of life. In this context, both the designed physical-material environment and selective space perception are crucial. These elements are accompanied by individual and collective attributions of meaning, which are influenced, among others, by gender, needs, subjective experiences and collective value patterns. Furthermore, such attributions can change over time depending on the situation (see Cattell et al. 2008). The extended concept of therapeutic landscapes allows researchers to investigate the effectiveness of different attributions of meaning to places and spaces as well as to assign different dimensions of appropriation for individual wellbeing (see Kistemann 2021). Places of wellbeing can be understood as being constructed by social, affective and material resources, which can be volatile (see Duff 2012). Furthermore Häberlin (2021) stresses the meaning of public spaces as spaces of opportunities for questioning habitual thought patterns as well as for emotional local connectedness and social interaction.
In this presentation, firstly, practices of appropriation of selected open spaces in the inner city of Leipzig will be elaborated. Secondly, the „specific construction“ of places of wellbeing will be detailed. The results of the investigations show that parks as well as brownfields in a residential neighbourhood can indeed be described as places of wellbeing. However, the attributions of meaning to the different types of spaces are, in part, complementary. Therefore, it can be asserted that well-designed parks are necessary but not sufficient to induce a feeling of wellbeing; importantly, wellbeing also needs various open spaces to enable everyday activities as basic human needs. The study is based on a mixed methods approach. Besides user surveys, guide-line based interviews, group discussions, observations, mental and sketch maps were used.
Mots clés : wellbeing|therapeutic landscape|space perception|meaning attribution|practices of appropriation
A103814VD