Place and belonging: what can we learn from Claremont Court Housing Scheme?

This project engages with a key area of public concern: sense of belonging. The proposed research asks how place influences belonging to place and community.
This question, which brings together three researchers from different disciplines (Architecture, Sociology and Social Work) and a collective of residents, is the basis of a unique cross-disciplinary approach that studies both physical and lived space, using as a case study Claremont Court housing scheme (Edinburgh). Claremont Court is a large post-war mixed development housing scheme, which included place-making as one of its founding principles. Over time and with significant societal changes and shifts in housing policy, the composition of the scheme has changed. It is therefore an apposite site for uncovering connections between place and belonging.
The research is built on two assumptions: first, it understands place (lived space) as the physical space together with the spatial atmosphere (those phenomena or lived aspects that give meaning to it). Second, it takes dwelling and belonging as interchangeable. Our assumption is that the process of place-making leads to belonging.
The proposed research identifies three interlinked strands that frame the underlying research question: space, atmosphere and belonging. These research strands require a five-stage new cross-disciplinary methodology that combines methods and evaluation processes from architectural theory with those of the social sciences. The originality of this research is the use of cross-disciplinary research in a deductive approach to confirm or not an architectural theory of place-making.
A phenomenological approach (i.e., one which studies human experience) has been used already to explore people's experience of place and how architecture can be a vehicle for place making. However, the gap between the conceptual approach of architectural theory and the study of lived space has still to be bridged.

Who will benefit from this research?
The immediate beneficiaries will be the collective of residents of Claremont Court.
In the medium-term, beneficiaries will include local authorities involved with the management of housing developments (such as City of Edinburgh Council) professionals involved with the design of the built environment (such as architects) and other communities of residents.
How will they benefit from this research?
The finding of the project will benefit the collective of residents of Claremont Court as helping them understand how Claremont Court as place influences them feeling as a community. This understanding can improve the way the housing development is managed as it will inform decisions to be taken by them (ie changes to communal areas).
The findings will also inform local authorities and other communities for better management by understanding the influence of place on the sense of belonging of their residents.
Finally, the influence of place on belonging is valuable information for those architects and other professionals involved in the design of future housing developments.
What will be done to ensure that they will benefit from this research?
The community of residents will be engaged throughout the project, and one of the outputs (a WordPress multi-user blog platform) will offer a live tool for their future community management.
The dedicated project website will be a source of dissemination to all beneficiary groups towards the end of the project and beyond. A dissemination event will be organised in Claremont Court to which study participants, local residents, architects and policymakers will be invited. An end-of-award seminar will be organised to which leading academics, architects and policymakers will be invited. Information about the study will be distributed through social media such as Twitter, and the Morgan Centre and College of Social Work's existing links with local and national media will also be used.