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Role of urban open spaces on immigrants’ life
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The number of immigrants in global cities continues to grow, and as a result, various challenges arise to engage newcomers in the host societies. According to Berry (2010) integration is the most preferable acculturation strategy for immigrants to adapt to their new environment. For immigrants, integration can be defined as being simultaneously involved in their own cultural heritage and their new society. From a planner’s points of view, Byers (1998) stated a city cannot be healthy if its built environment is constructed in a manner that prevents social interaction.
In cities, urban public spaces serve as venues for social interaction, sociability, conviviality, and the enactment of community. Enjoyment, social interaction and making relationship with others in public spaces facilitate building emotional bonds with those places and the community. This feeling, generally called “place attachment”, is defined as a multifaceted concept that characterizes the bonding between individual and their important places or their meaningful environments (Giuliani, 2003; Low & Altman, 1992).
These place-based psychological ties to the community can make a critical contribution to integrating residents, effective community development, and planning efforts, as they are a source of community power and collective action (Manzo & Perkins, 2006). This proposition may be even more true for communities with immigrants. In fact, successful urban open spaces play significant roles in building place attachment for host societies, and facilitating integration and adaptation process of immigrants which may lead to emerging transnational identities for immigrants.
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- Date created
- 2017-05-07
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- Type of Item
- Conference/Workshop Presentation