Person-Place Interactions: Landscape Choreographies of Self-Regulation

This chapter considers the process and importance of person-place interactions by exploring the connections people develop with places within the remit of reinforcing positive life experiences, life satisfaction and health, adopting the idea of landscape choreography. Ideas are derived from research involving planned walks in various urban green environments embracing a methodology involving the collection and analysis of user-based narratives. It explores the nature of these encounters, to consider how people live out their individual choreographies of landscape experience realising personal affordances and negotiating the experience towards positivity. It further considers the role of places in defining the self, expectations, in mediating and reinforcing personal well-being, and stresses the importance of easy access to quality urban landscapes designed on biophilic principles, or that promote routine contact with the natural world, as a biophilic pathway for self-regulation.