Making sense of place: a new framework for place-based research in the transport realm

The transitional process from “space” to the more complex “place”, through human-assigned locational significance, has garnered significant interest in various disciplines including psychology (e.g. place attachment, place identity), urban planning (e.g. new urbanism, placemaking), and transport (e.g. transit-oriented development, complete street). This interest has yielded valuable yet fragmented insights and definitional inconsistencies in place-based terminologies resulting in perceived disorganisation of the literature and hindrance to transdisciplinary scholarship. This study aims to bring these disciplinary scholarships into a unified conceptual framework to foster interdisciplinary discourse, understanding, and collaboration. Based on a scoping review of 194 journal articles and conference papers, 13 books, and 2 reports, the study found that places are studied from the perspective of “interpreters”, “shapers”, and “connecters”. The place-based vocabularies and methodologies as used within each of these perspectives are synthesised, defined, and framed to enable cross-disciplinary discourse. The framework outlines the strength of interlinkages among the three perspectives, with shapers serving as an intermediary between interpreters and connecters, borrowing concepts and methods from both ends of the spectrum (e.g. subjective vs. objective analysis of places). Significant gaps in research among the linkages are presented, paving the way for future collaboration and understanding of places in the context of transport research.