From Nature to Place: Exploring Overlooked Geographies of Contact with Nature through Peri-urban Day Walks

Abstract

Contact with nature has increasingly attracted attention in both research and policy, particularly for its role in fostering pro-environmental behaviour. However, the geographies of getting in contact with nature have remained largely overlooked. Since most people live and work in built environments, encounters with nature typically take place beyond city boundaries during leisure time, often in the form of outdoor recreation. Overlooking these spatial aspects ignores the need for transportation, which is usually done by private car. This creates a paradox in which the benefits of nature contact are offset by the environmental impacts of travel. This thesis argues that the concept of nature lacks the geographical precision needed to understand contact with the more-than-human world. It therefore proposes a place-oriented approach to explore how the concept of place can deepen our understanding of people’s recreational experiences of non-built peri-urban environments, and how these experiences, together with the temporal structure of everyday life, interact with travel to such places. This aim is addressed through a study of day walks in peri-urban environments in the Gothenburg Region (Sweden). Place is conceptualised in two interrelated ways: as the lived encounter with physical environments, and as access shaped by place knowledge, available time, and distance. Data were collected through two rounds of interviews with 38 participants who regularly go for day walks. The second round included individuals with experience of travelling by car and/or public transport to places for outdoor recreation. Findings show that the concept of place reveals driving forces behind nature contact that the concept of ‘nature’ alone cannot capture. Encounters are experienced differently depending on whether places or elements are familiar or unfamiliar. Since novelty is central to the recreational experience, new places were often preferred – a desire more easily fulfilled by car than by public transport. Access was also shaped by available time, with car travel enabling a much-desired sense of flexibility, while public transport introduced a sense of fixity that could jeopardise the experience. The thesis concludes by identifying five obstacles to developing relationships with places for outdoor recreation.