The promise of place

Are you working in the for-purpose space, eager to make a positive impact? You may have come across the term 'place-based' in discussions, as these approaches gain renewed attention.

Having been deeply involved in several place-based projects in recent months, I've been contemplating the significance of place—how we connect with it, its role in community development practice, and the factors influencing our ability to achieve social outcomes in a specific locale. This marks the first in a series of musings about place that I look forward to sharing with you over the summer.

The different dimensions of place

While there seems to be renewed government attention on place, many of us, especially those in local government, have been working in a place-based way for a long time. Perhaps we just didn't have the language to describe the approach.

Place is one of the oldest concepts in geography. Places are spaces or locations that holds meaning for us at any scale—street, suburb, town, city. National Geographic defines ‘place’ as a multi-dimensional, encapsulating the following elements:

• Location - a particular position on the earth’s surface

• Locale - the physical setting for relationships between people

• A sense of place - the emotions that are attached to a place-based on experience

Reflecting on connection to place

On a personal level when I think about my own connection to place, I think about my neighbourhood. The Jacarandas in spring, crisp summer mornings and hot afternoons, the football siren on a winter weekend and the smell of incense wafting across to my veranda from our next-door neighbour as he does his morning prayers. Along with the sensory interaction I have with place I also think about the relational aspects. The daily interactions I have with the people around me - conversations at school drop-off, the reliable smile from the owners of our post office when I go to pick up the mail, looking after my neighbours pets.

Places hold our memories and stories. They remind us of who we are and where we’ve come from. Walking around my neighbourhood I’m reminded of different stages of my life – exploring these streets as a child, the joys of student shared house living, falling in love, raising a family, and building a community. There’s a church that you can see from many parts of my neighbourhood. When I was young my nana would take me on walks, she would point at the church steeple and we would play a game with our hands ….. “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open up the doors and here are all the people!”. When I see that steeple now, it reminds me of my connection with family and what it was like to be a child exploring these streets with curiosity and delight in things big and small.

As well as holding our individual stories, places hold stories of how we have lived together as communities over time. I recently participated in the Gallup VR experience and learnt about the largely untold stories of Lake Monger and its significance for the Wadjak Noongar people, originally as a gathering place and then as a site that has come to be associated with horrific violence perpetrated by settler colonialists. As we engage with the stories that a place holds we become stewards of not only our individual stories but also the collective memory of communities and their shared history.

The significance of place in community development practice

In 2023, individuals find community through various avenues. We may gravitate to communities that form around mutual interest – sports, music, pets, literature. Some of us may feel part of online communities or perhaps we find community through our religious and cultural affiliations. Whilst all of these are forms of community they don’t replace the importance of place as a natural site of connection. Places provide backdrops for our daily lives. They are where we build organic connections with the people and institutions that proximity brings us into contact with. They are also sites where we access mutual support and resources. Where we can build a sense of connection and belonging.

The power of place is evident in the results of the Scanlon Foundation’s 2023 Social Cohesion Mapping Survey. Whilst overall social cohesion in Australia is on the decline and our sense of belonging at a national level has taken a big dive, our sense of belonging and connection at a local level is strong. Four out of five Australians reporting they feel a sense of belonging in their neighbourhood and that their neighbours help each other out.

Let’s be clear though –places offer this promise of connection and belonging in varying degrees. Whilst some of us have a strong and positive connection with place, others may feel ambivalent, or disconnected and excluded. Maybe we have mixed feelings about place. It is this diverse experience of place that makes places ideal sites for interventions that seek to shift the dial on social exclusion and disadvantage. By focusing on people’s experience at a local level we are better able to identify local solutions that respond to the diversity and nuance within each community.

Place-based approaches recognise that places are where people come together to solve problems. This approach to social impact invests in supporting collaboration at the local level, bringing together individuals and organisations with vested interests in improving their communities.

As a community development practitioner, I view place through an asset-based lens. Even the most disadvantaged communities have strengths that can be harnessed for positive change. I’ve worked across a number of different places over the last two decades and asking the question, “what’s working well here?”, has been a really good starting point. The answer has been different for each community.

·      Engaged residents committed to making a difference

·      Collaborative community service systems

·      Shopping centres that take an active role in community building

·      Informal and formal community leaders that mobilise others behind change

·      A strong sense of place identity

By taking a place-centric approach, we can identify barriers and strengths, paving the way for positive social change.

Stay tuned for more musings on place in the upcoming articles as we explore strategies for building place knowledge and nurturing relationships in place - the foundations for effective place-based work.