**2. Theoretical perspectives**

## **2.1 Place, place attachment and environmental stewardship**

Place concept is an increasingly contested concept across disciplines including positivistic scholars, social constructivism and sychometrics. In a review of place literature Low and Altman [3], established that as space is an integrating concept, there is no systematic theory of place and scholars have increasingly echoed luck of conceptual coherence in place research. The concept of place broadly connote to the subjective experience of embodied human experience in the material world [4]. Morgan argues further that place concept is paradoxical, with meaning that is not readily understood, but difficult to define. While understanding place is a step towards comprehending place attachment, this chapter is about place attachment and its implicature to environmental stewardship in peri-urban areas. The next paragraphs of this Section therefore narrows down to the conception of place attachment and its interlinkages to environmental stewardship behavior.

Place attachement is defined as an attitude of bonding (trust and belonging), mutual concerns and shared values with other members of one's group or locale' [5]. "…. Place attachment may contribute to the formation, maintanance and preservation of the identity of a person, group, or culture. And it may also be that place attachment plays a role in fostering individual, group and cultural selfesteem, self-worth, and self-pride …." [3]. Place attachment is also assumed to be of importance to the community since it facilitates engagement in local affairs [6]. Studies variously justify that place attachment motivates indiviaduals to contribute

#### *Community Attachment and Environmental Stewardship: A Peri-Urban Perspective DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99495*

to civic activity on behalf of one's residential location, in the form of sustainable behavior [7, 8], ecological behaviors [9] or reactions to encroachment of one's territory [10, 11]. On this basis, place attachment serves both the individual and large community [6]. Place attachment has also been correlated to community resilience building processes [12] and fostering local friendship [13].

## **2.2 Peri-urban in the context of environmental stewardship**

Situating the peri-urban concept is largely a daunting endeavor. This owes to its increasingly contested milieu by both academia and development practitioners [14, 15]. This Section reviews the conceptual contestation of peri-urban not in the sense of engaging in the debate of its contestations but for understanding its complex nature towards realizing environmental stewardship. The remainder of this Section therefore provide the contested environment and deployed discussion of the peri-urban concept, thereby its linkage to environmental stewardship and to the broad landscape planning discourse.

Broadly, the peri-urban concept is variously and increasingly viewed and conceptualized across both the geographical and disciplinary niches. Arguments behind the multiple conceptions of the peri-urban include lack of scientific definition Forsyth [15], diversity of engaged disciplinary orientations Thuo [14], the difficulties linked to the delimiting the spatial extent of this dynamic region Brook [16] and the equivocation of the concept itself. Notably, scholars increasingly argue that rural, periurban and urban environments operate as a system rather than independent entities [17, 18]. At the same time, peri-urban area is increasingly claimed to constitute the intersection point between urban and rural areas [19, 20]. In nutshell, there are growing yet converging understandings within academia on the lived reality of the diverse and context-laden definitions of the peri-urban concept [21]. Another converging understanding linked to peri-urban conception is the co-existence of urban and rural features within cities and beyond their limits [17, 21]. Notably, inspired by the aforehinted converging understandings, this chapter adopts the conception of peri-urban as defined by Mngumi [22], i.e. peri-urban is a city transitional zone, amalgamating both urban and rural landscape functions and features. In addition to the conceptual definition, the empirical materials discussed herein are drawn from the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves at the peri-urban of Dar es Salaam city. Dar es Salaam is among the most rapidly growing cities in Africa and currently the business capital of Tanzania. Similar to other peri-urban areas in the Global South [23], natural resources and/ecosystem services in these peri-urban forest reserves are increasingly claimed to deteriorate [22].

Literature has increasingly established that the quantity and quality of natural resources are deteriorating in peri-urban areas, and particularly so in Sub-Saharan Africa [23, 24]. One explanation behind the decline of natural resources in periurban areas is the ongoing urbanization which has increasingly resulted in the expansion of the built environment on ecologically sensitive land, especially in periurban areas [25–27]. Onother explanation of the growing degradation of natural resources in peri-urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa is the rapid urbanization due to poverty [28, 29]. The poverty aspect which is largely prevelant in the Global South context renders it difficult for the community members to inculcate the environmental stewardship habit. This is due to the fact that their livelihoods are intricately connected to the resources in their vicinity and so despite having strong natural attachment to the environment, this is compromised by livelihood hardships and as a result leading to low stewardship to the environment. Notably, there is a host of other contributing factors to the decline of natural resources at the peri-urban areas of Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves. These include climate change, the

increase of anthropogenic activities and the expansion of the city's built area to the peri-urban areas [22].
