Using a narrative approach to understand place attachments and responses to power line proposals: The importance of life-place trajectories

Abstract Research on people-place relations, incorporating place attachment and place identity, has often adopted a structural approach, overlooking the dynamic nature of these relations over time. More process-oriented research has tended to investigate the impacts of single moments or events, neglecting a broader focus upon people's life course. To address this gap, this study investigated patterns of residential place attachments ('life-place trajectories') and used these to better understand current place relations and responses to change, including disruption to pre-existing place bonds. Narrative interviews (n = 25) were conducted in 2013 with residents living in Nailsea, a UK town affected by proposals to construct a high voltage power line. Three notable findings emerged. First, the study indicated five novel lifeplace trajectories characterised by diverse configurations of residential mobility and continuity of settlement type. Second, the study extends our understanding of varieties of relationship with the current residence place, including identifying a novel variety of 'traditional-active attachment'. Third, the study indicates the relevance of the trajectories for understanding responses to place change proposals, including acceptance and opposition. The findings show the value of the narrative interview method for revealing place relations across the life course, informing understanding of people-place relations and infrastructure siting.


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Introduction
Research on place attachment and related concepts such as place identity and place meanings has burgeoned in recent years across a number of cognate disciplines (Lewicka, 2011). Two basic orientations have been identified in this literature: a structural approach that tends to take place attachment as a given and is primarily interested in understanding its qualities, antecedents and implications, and a process approach that seeks to understand the development of people-place bonds over time (Giuliani, 2003). To date, and particularly within the psychology literature, the 'structural' approach has predominated, using both qualitative and quantitative-based methods to capture the intensity and variety of people-place relations at a specific point in time (Devine-Wright, 2014).
Examples of the 'structural' approach include: (1) Proshansky and colleagues' original formulation of place identity, conceived as a substructure of identity (1983); (2) Scannell and Gifford's (2010) conceptual model of place attachment comprising person, process and place dimensions; (3) Hummon (1992) and Lewicka's (2011Lewicka's ( , 2013 typology of varieties of people-place relations, encompassing different forms of attachment (traditional attachment, referring to an unselfconscious taken-for-granted bond to the residence place, and active attachment, designating a reflective and self-conscious bond) and non-attachment to place (place alienated, referring to a dislike of one's residence place, place relativity, an ambivalent and conditionally accepting attitude, and placelessness, designating an absence of emotional association with place). Whilst insightful, the structural approach has relatively little to say about the dynamics of people-place relations as processes that might change over time, including how patterns of past residential mobility might influence ways of relating to the current residence place, and how these patterns might in turn be associated with responses to future changes to a place.
A number of studies have put place attachment dynamics centre stage. Theorising in human geography has emphasised the continuous nature of physical changes to place, critiquing attempts to conserve place meanings as a potentially exclusionary form of essentialism (Massey, 2005). Researchers in environmental psychology have explored sudden moments of change that disrupt existing place attachments, for example arising from burglary to the residence place or ecological damage to the local area (Brown and Perkins, 1992). More recently, attempts have been made to understand community objections to large-scale energy infrastructure projects, often dubbed 'NIMBYism' (Not In My Back Yard;Dear, 1992), as a form of place-protective action arising from strong bonds with the affected place (Devine-Wright, 2009).
Literature has also explored changes to people over time, and how these implicate people-place relations (Giuliani, 2003;Devine-Wright, 2014). For example, researchers have examined place attachment formation at different life stages using a structural approach, highlighting sequential stages in the development of a sense of place amongst long-term residents, and the importance of autobiographical insideness in maintaining rootedness in old age (Rowles, 1983;Hay, 1998a,b). Research has also M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 2 observed the role of residential and work-related mobilities in informing place attachment (e.g. Gustafson, 2001;Tabernero et al., 2010;Vidal et al., 2010), including the disruptive impacts of relocation and displacement experienced by military personnel and the homeless (Fullilove, 1996), and place attachment formation amongst relocating individuals striving to maintain continuity across settlement type (e.g. Feldman, 1990Feldman, , 1996Fried, 2000;Speller and Twigger-Ross, 2009). The roles of nostalgia (Lewicka, 2014) and solastalgia ('the pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of isolation connected to the present state of one's home and territory', Albrecht, 2007:96) in hindering or facilitating attachment to place(s) have also received some minor attention. Finally, some research has begun to explore similarities between processes of place and interpersonal attachment (Morgan, 2010;Scannell and Gifford, 2014), with an interest primarily in the nature of childhood attachment experiences and their implications for styles of attachment over time (e.g. anxious or avoidant).
Whilst the aforementioned studies foreground dynamics of attachment and detachment to place(s), they tend to do so by studying single moments or, at the most, multiple incidents of change, that preclude analysis of attachment dynamics across the entire life course. As far as we are aware, no study to date has investigated the ways in which people talk about and represent their past residential histories -what we describe as their 'life-place trajectories' -and examined how these might inform understanding of the type of relationship they have with their current residence place, and the implications these may have for responses to proposals to change the residence place. This is the gap addressed by this research.

The role of 'life-place trajectories' in understanding responses to place change
Disruption to place attachment refers to the negative impact that sudden ecological or human-induced change can have upon pre-existing place attachment bonds and identities (Fried, 1963;Inhalan & Finch, 2004). Brown and Perkins (1992) proposed a three-stage model of disruption (pre-disruption, disruption and postdisruption), outlining a process leading to the formation of new bonds following events such as household burglary or forced relocation. Elsewhere, studies adopting Identity Process Theory (Speller & Twigger-Ross, 2009;Timotijevic & Breakwell, 2000), Social Identity Theory (Bonaiuto, Breakwell & Cano, 1996;Carrus et al. 2002), and Place Identity Theory Stedman, 2002), have investigated ways in which place change may threaten place-based identities. Although highly instructive, this literature is limited by implying that disruption is the result of an actual, rather than a proposed, physical change to a place (Devine-Wright, 2009), and by overlooking the ways that change may be seen as enhancing as well as negative or 'disruptive' in nature (Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010;Devine-Wright, 2011a).
A related and emerging body of literature has focused upon community responses to proposals for siting energy infrastructure, understanding these as forms of place change that impact upon existing people-place bonds. The construction of new high voltage power lines, for example in the UK (Jay 2005), Sweden (Soini et al., 2011) Germany (Zoellner et al., 2008) and Switzerland (Lienert et al., 2015), has proven highly M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 3 controversial, resulting in strong community opposition, planning delays and financial cost for developers. Local objectors have often been cast pejoratively using the NIMBY concept, labelled as selfish, ignorant and irrational (e.g. Burningham et al., 2006;Cotton & Devine-Wright, 2011). Despite its prominence, the NIMBY concept has been widely criticised for overlooking the varied motivations leading to opposition and for discounting the subjective emotional and symbolic associations people form with places (Wolsink, 2000;Ellis et al., 2007;Devine-Wright, 2009, 2011c. In response to these critiques, Devine-Wright (2009) posited a place-based approach, highlighting the roles of place attachment and place-related symbolic meanings in shaping individual and collective responses to energy infrastructure proposals. NIMBY type opposition is here recast as 'place-protective action' with locally affected communities theorised to resist siting proposals arising from a sense of threat to existing place relations. To date, empirical studies have typically used surveys to quantitatively examine associations between intensity or varieties of place attachment and levels of social acceptance toward various large-scale infrastructure proposals, including hydropower plants, wind farms, tidal devices and power lines (Vorkinn & Riese, 2011;Devine-Wright, 2011a, 2011b. More recently, Veelen and Haggett (In Press) used a qualitative method to show how different types of place attachment and related place meanings can act as both a driver of support and a motivator of opposition toward small-scale, community-led energy projects.
Given that some studies have found strong place attachment to be associated with project opposition (Vorkinn & Riese, 2001;Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010), it might be assumed more generally that individuals with stronger place attachment are more likely to experience place disruption in contexts of change and to oppose energy projects. However, studies have shown this conclusion to be simplistic. First, type of place attachment has been shown to be important. A study conducted in the same town as the present research found that only the 'active' attachment variety, not 'traditional' place attachment, emerged as a significant predictor of objections to a power line proposal, suggesting that strong place bonds per se are not sufficient to explain objections to place change (Devine-Wright, 2013). Second, symbolic meanings are also important, in particular the degree of congruence or 'fit' between place and infrastructure-based meanings or representations, with lack of congruence shown to result in objection and negative feelings, and congruence leading to acceptance and support (McLachlan, 2009;Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010;Venables et al., 2012;Anderson, 2013;. In assessing this degree of 'fit', studies have adopted a constructionist epistemology, interpreting place and technology meanings as social constructions that are plural, often contested, dynamic rather than fixed and founded upon wider socio-cultural discourses of landscape and rurality (Williams, 2014;DiMasso et al., 2014;. Literature also suggests that the ways in which residents represent place change can vary based on residence status (i.e. insider/outsider) and divergent stakeholder groups (i.e. residents/developers) (Manzo & Perkins, 2006). Although research is scarce in this area, residents with insider status, a strong sense of belonging to that place and M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 4 ancestral ties (Hay, 1998b) and a traditional variety of place attachment, have been shown to familiarise controversial place change or deem it as place enhancing in contexts of symbolic fit, whilst for those with self-proclaimed outsider status and weak place bonds, place-based meanings lack relevance (Devine-Wright, 2011a; Bailey, Devine-Wright & Batel, 2016). In addition, whilst planning authorities and developers emphasise community participation in urban renewal or energy infrastructure projects, residents' emotional bonds and meanings associated with place can be overlooked, pointing to a disjuncture in the ways that place changes can be viewed between developers and residents of a place (Manzo & Perkins, 2006;Drenthen, 2010;McLachlan, 2009).
Despite the insights gained from these studies, there are a number of gaps that remain to be addressed. Firstly, research has tended to seek associations or predictive significance between place attachment varieties or intensity and project acceptance, thus overlooking lived experience in place following proposed or actual place change. More importantly, studies have tended to focus upon the potentially disruptive impacts of a single event or move (e.g. burglary, forced relocation from one residence to another) upon current attachments to the residence place. The place attachment literature as a whole has surprisingly little to say about the multiple place attachments that people may form over their life course arising from patterns of residential (im)mobility. As a result, relatively little is known about how place attachments across the life course -people's life-place trajectories -might inform, first, their attachments to the current residence place, and second, their experiences of and responses to potential place change. Given this research gap, it is highly relevant to explore the contribution that people's life-place trajectories may have in enhancing our understanding of responses to proposed place change generally, in this case to a highvoltage power line proposal. This research was guided by the following questions: 1. What patterns of residential mobility and attachment (i.e. 'life-place trajectories') can be identified across the life course of individuals? 2. To what extent do life-place trajectories underlie the different varieties of relationship that people may have with the current residence place? 3. How might a consideration of people's life-place trajectories improve our understanding of the different ways that people respond to a proposed local place change?

Research design and context
A single case study design was adopted since it allows for the analysis of specific contexts in depth, where such analysis has a wider value for understanding the potential for systemic change (Yin, 2014). The place selected for this study is Nailsea, a small town (population of 17,649 people; UK Census Data, 2011) located in the county of Somerset approximately 13 kilometres from Bristol, a city in South West England. The M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 5 town was formerly a major glass-making centre, and following substantial residential development over the 1960s-70s became a semi-rural commuter town for those working in Bristol. Despite its designation as a town, Nailsea retains architectural features of its village past, and remains surrounded by countryside and farmland (Nailsea Town Council, 2011).
In November 2009, Nailsea residents learnt of proposals to construct a new 60km 400kV high voltage power line near the town, involving 46.5 metre tall towers to connect a proposed new nuclear power station at Hinckley Point to the existing electricity network near Bristol (National Grid, 2014). The power line proposal was controversial in Nailsea, where a local action group called 'Save Our Valley', now 'Nailsea Against Pylons' (Nailsea Against Pylons, 2011-2016, was set up to oppose the project and campaign for alternative siting options, including undersea and underground (Devine-Wright, 2013).
It is important to note that electricity supply infrastructure was already sited proximate to the town -a smaller 132kV power line has run to the west of the town since the 1950s (see Figure 1). Initial proposals for the 400kV power line nominated two alternative route corridors -to the west (replacing the existing power line with the larger 400kV line) or a new line through countryside to the east of the town. Both options were strongly objected to, particularly the eastern proposals that were represented by residents as a 'fence' surrounding both sides of the town (Devine-Wright, 2013). In response to public objections, and following phases of public consultation between 2009 and 2014, the power line proposal was revised to prefer the western option that replaces the existing

Procedure and sample
A qualitative method was employed, informed by an epistemological approach combining insights from phenomenological (e.g. Manzo, 2005) and social constructionist (e.g.  perspectives. This arises from a primary interest in how individuals make sense of their relationship with the places that they have lived or are currently living in, whilst also taking account of broader sociocultural discourses about dwelling, mobility and landscape. Semi-structured interviews with a narrative focus (Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2000;Riessman, 2008) were used to examine participants' life-place trajectories. A pre-interview task was employed to encourage participants to think narratively about their experiences and feelings to past and present residence places prior to interview. This comprised three activities: the first asked participants to list the places they had lived in over time; the second requested completion of a 'place history grid' -an adaptation of Elliot's (2005) 'Life history grid'instructing participants to chronologically order their residence places and to reflect upon their thoughts, feelings and experiences in each location; and the third to list five words or phrases that best described Nailsea. The pre-interview task was designed so as to impose little ordered thematic content, and was completed and returned by participants approximately one to two weeks prior to a scheduled interview. Following discussion of residential experience and varieties of people-place relations during the interviews, participants were shown summarised descriptions of the five types of place relations (Lewicka, 2011) and asked to select the variety that best matched how they related to Nailsea and the surrounding countryside. This micro-task was employed in order to assist participants in identifying more openly with an existing type of attachment or non-attachment, but was used only as a confirmatory tool following prior elicitation.
Stratified random sampling (Bryman, 2008) was employed with the aim of recruiting a representative sample of Nailsea residents based on gender, age and occupation (Census Data, mid-2011). The sample consisted of 13 females and 12 males, ranging in age from 18 to 85 years. Occupational backgrounds included 2 university students, 8 in permanent or temporary employment, 1 self-employed, 11 retirees, and 3 without employment. Following receipt of consent for audio recording, all interviews were conducted at people's households between January and April 2013, and lasted for approximately one to two hours. Appendix 1 provides a list of the interview questions employed during narrative interviews. Participants were thanked upon completion of the interview and given a financial honorarium. The sample was primarily recruited by approaching Nailsea residents in the street on different days, at different hours, and in different locations around the town, although some snowballing was also used. All interviews were conducted by the first author.

Analytic procedure
Following transcription of the audio recordings, two modes of qualitative data analysis were undertaken using NVivo analytic software: thematic analysis (Bryman, 2008) and thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 1993(Riessman, , 2008. First, thematic analysis was used in order to identify varieties of people-place relations amongst the participants. Whilst sub-themes and wider themes in the interview data were developed using a coding template, open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was also used to enable potentially novel place relations to emerge. Although useful for establishing themes vertically and comparing across participants, conventional thematic analysis tends to isolate fragments of data and overlook the temporal inter-connections between them. For this reason, thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 1993(Riessman, , 2008 was conducted in order to establish changes in people-place relations over the life course and to gauge responses to the power line proposal. This involved thematically coding participants' relations to past residence places in a temporal fashion, so that narrative accounts of relations to different residence places over the life course could be elaborated. Patterns across these narrative themes were then sought in order to arrive at particular 'life-place trajectories'. Finally, conventional thematic analysis was utilised in order to understand participants' views towards the power line proposal and links were sought between these and life-place trajectories.

Results:
3.1 Identifying life-place trajectories and relations with the current residence place Thematic narrative analysis was used to identify five life-place trajectories that involved differing configurations of residence (im)mobility and continuity of settlement type across the life course (see table 1 for a summary of each life-place trajectory). Sections below describe each trajectory and relate these to people's present day relations to Nailsea and nearby countryside areas. In each case, participants that exemplify each trajectory are briefly described.
i. 'Long-term residence in a single place' is a life-place trajectory that is characterised by low residential mobility and residence for many decades in Nailsea, strong local family ties, a strong sense of autobiographical insideness (Hay, 1998a;Lewicka, 2014), and the unselfconscious, traditional form of attachment to the residence place (Lewicka, 2011;. For example, Ray is now in his mid-eighties and lives in a bungalow with his wife in the centre of town. Having been raised in 'the village', Ray has lived and worked all his life in Nailsea, only ever relocating twice within the town itself. Ray's narrative account suggested a deep emotional bond to Nailsea and surrounding countryside areas centred on a strong thread of autobiographical insideness -a bond that stems from life-long experience and memory-making in place (Lewicka, 2014). Ray's biographical characterisation of Nailsea supports Hummon's (1992) finding that 'everyday' (or traditional) rootedness was centred on biographical accounts of life in the city of Worcester. When asked about his relationship to Nailsea and whether he felt it had changed over time, Ray expressed a strong unchanging emotional bond to Nailsea: Ray expressed a taken-for-granted bond to Nailsea and the surrounding countryside that may arise from a lack of competing place experiences that might ordinarily, as Hummon (1992:259) suggests, 'raise such identification to consciousness and transform it'. Along with others sharing this trajectory, Ray represented Nailsea as a 'secure', 'safe', and 'familiar' place, drawing on shared meanings around place as sanctuary and refuge (Dovey, 1985;Tuan, 1980), with the result that staying in Nailsea upon retirement was felt as the 'natural' thing to do.
ii. 'Return to the home place' is a life-place trajectory characterised by participants that grew up in Nailsea, moved elsewhere for short periods of time in early adulthood, experienced a negative life event in those places before returning to Nailsea seeking to re-assume a strong place bond, a social support network, and commitment to long-term residence in the place. Like participants within the first trajectory, these individuals tended to have lived most of their lives in Nailsea, with low levels of residential mobility, and show strong familiarity with the place and surrounding areas. They expressed an unreflective bond to Nailsea and relatively low involvement in place-based communal activities (features of traditional attachment); however, this was combined with some interest in the goings-on and historical roots of the place (features of active attachment) -suggesting a hybrid variety of traditional/active attachment not found in previous studies.
Phil is in his mid-fifties and lives with his family in the centre of Nailsea. Having formed a strong bond to Nailsea growing up in the place, Phil spent two unhappy years living in a nearby coastal town as a divorcee and lone parent, eventually seeking the family support network and associations of familiarity and security present in Nailsea: '…the experiences of Clevedon were very negative for me and so therefore, yeah, they did rub off on the place… moving back to somewhere where I knew I liked, back to Nailsea, where I knew very well, was like moving back into a place of security for me…it was moving back to a support network…a place I was familiar with'.
Phil identified with attributes of both traditional and active varieties of place attachment: It may be that this life-place trajectory, whilst leading participants to take the current residence place for granted, encouraged a greater awareness of the positive facets offered by life in Nailsea (e.g. familiarity, stability, continuity, a social support network) and thus proffered a greater propensity amongst these participants to stay aware of the goings-on and the positive features of life in Nailsea. This also suggests, albeit in a tentative manner, that some individuals do not fall neatly into either of the existing varieties of place attachment, thus blurring the boundaries between what have until present been conceptualised as distinct ways of relating to the residence place (Hummon, 1992;Lewicka, 2011;Devine-Wright, 2013 High n/a n/a n/a iii. 'Residential mobility with continuity in settlement type' is a life-place trajectory that was expressed by participants who had moved to Nailsea as adults. These individuals had lived in and formed active attachments to prior semi-rural residence places that were valued for their nearby scenic countryside settings and outdoor recreational activities. They sought continuity in semi-rural settlement type, consciously moving to Nailsea and forging an active attachment to the place.
David is in his mid-sixties and has lived in Nailsea with his partner for fifteen years. He spent much of his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood residing in 'semi-rural' settlements in close proximity to nearby countryside, forest and coastal areas. David developed active bonds to places that corresponded to a preferred generalised semirural settlement type valued for proximity to 'natural' locales and recreational activities.
He has enacted continuity of the semi-rural settlement type across his life course and this played a key role in his decision to move to Nailsea: David's case suggests that continuity of settlement type across time and place(s) fosters a particular type of attachment to the current residence place. As reflected in the concept of 'settlement identity' (Feldman, 1990(Feldman, , 1996, whilst individuals may experience positive and intense bonds with places regarded as specific and unique, identification may also occur with generic 'settlement types' and this may 'provide dispositions for future engagement with that type of settlement ' (1990:191). David's early experience, predisposition and continuity seeking for semi-rural settlements over time, served to foster his eventual engagement and active attachment to Nailsea.
iv. 'Residential mobility with discontinuity in settlement type' was expressed by participants who had formerly lived in urban settlements such as large towns and cities. These places were generally valued for their 'buzz' and 'energy', and participants expressed strong active attachments with these places. Subsequent discontinuity in settlement type arising from moving to Nailsea was associated with an alienated, and in M A N U S C R I P T

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12 some cases ambivalent, relationship to the place, suggesting a current place relationship of estrangement.
Mark is in his mid-twenties and moved to Nailsea approximately one year ago with his partner who sought to live closer to family in the area. Although he has lived in different places over his lifetime, they have tended to be larger urban settlements. During the interview, Mark spoke favourably of city life and the excitement and 'liveliness' that go with it: 'When I think of somewhere I really liked living, I think of somewhere like Manchester [a city in Northern England]… I liked the atmosphere of the place, the architecture, the energy, and there were so many things to do'.
His feelings towards Nailsea however were comparatively negative. Mark's dislike of the place and his sense of alienation from it are related to his representation of Nailsea as 'dead', 'too quiet', with 'nothing going on'. Were it not for his partner's desire to live close to family, Mark would likely relocate:

'Nailsea really doesn't have much going for it…it's just dead…it's too quiet for me, there's just nothing going on. I don't feel attached to Nailsea. As I say, other than its proximity to Bristol (a nearby city) and the fact that my girlfriend's family base is here, I wouldn't see any reason to stay'.
Mark's feelings of alienation toward Nailsea arise from discontinuity across time in valued and preferred settlement type. This suggests that whilst continuation of settlement type can foster attachment to a place, discontinuity can hinder attachment and lead to alienation and feelings of detachment from the current place of residence (Feldman, 1990;Fried, 2000).
Participants who expressed a narrative of discontinuity in settlement type tended to relate negatively to Nailsea, evoking either the Place Alienated (as in Mark's case) or Place Relative variety of people-place relations, as in the case of Maggie. Maggie is a retiree who has lived in Nailsea for the last ten years. Having lived most of her adult life in large towns and cities in the South of England, places with which she held positive attachments, she experienced discontinuity of settlement type following moving to Nailsea:

'Well you see I grew up in towns and cities so it's what I've always been used to … moving here (to Nailsea) was obviously very different, but we came here because of Richard's (Maggie's husband) work. I realized from certain things that he was hankering to come back to Somerset, he was brought up in this town from age seven, but for me it was a real break with the past, it wasn't somewhere I'd ever seen myself living'.
Despite experiencing similar settlement discontinuity to Mark, Maggie did not express feelings of alienation toward Nailsea, but instead held ambivalent feelings towards the place, recognising that despite the lack of 'vibrancy' and 'energy', living in Nailsea did M A N U S C R I P T Although discontinuity in settlement type did seem to hinder attachment with Nailsea, Maggie expressed ambivalence regarding her feelings to Nailsea rather than alienation.

A C C E P T E D
To account for her different response to Mark, it is useful to examine Maggie's life-place trajectory along with other participants who identified with the Place Relative variety. For these, a common occurrence was that they had spent some short periods during their childhood and adolescent years visiting relatives in countryside settings and held fond memories of those times. Maggie fondly recalled visits to the countryside in Somerset, when visiting her grandmother as a child, which she linked to her current relationship with Nailsea:

'We would often visit my Grandmother in Somerset and I have such fond memories of galloping through the long grass and picking blackberries, they were really special times and my Grandmother and I were very close. That's probably why I can deal with life here…I mean I'd move out tomorrow to live somewhere like Bath, but while I'm here I do try to enjoy the countryside'.
These memories may have lessened levels of negative affect toward Nailsea following later discontinuity in settlement type. This was a consistent theme amongst the participants that identified with Place Relativity to Nailsea. It also suggests ways that interpersonal (Scannell and Gifford, 2014) and place attachments may overlap and combine in ways that continue to influence attachment decades later with the current residence place, a finding that deserves future research.
v. 'High residential mobility' is a fifth life-place trajectory characterised by numerous relocations, a lack of place attachment to former and present residence places, and a tendency toward non-territorial identity formation (Lewicka, 2011). This trajectory was viewed by participants as 'conditioning' them to expect and accept the placelessness variety of relations with place.
For example, Patricia is in her late-sixties and has lived in Nailsea for approximately ten years. With a father in the military, she regularly changed residence place as a child, and this pattern continued during adulthood when she chose to travel the world as a Christian missionary with her partner, eventually living in various locations throughout South-East Asia. When Patricia spoke of her earlier life she expressed a lack of attachment to former residence places, suggesting that it was the constant process of relocating as a child, and later as a Christian missionary in adulthood, that hindered the possibility of forming stable or continuous place bonds:

'When I was a child we were moving every other year or so and I never spent long enough in a place to really get to know it, so I think that's probably why I didn't feel compelled to invest much emotion in places then because I knew it was all very temporary… that extended into my later adulthood when my partner and I went off to
South-East Asia. We were never in one place for more than a year or two, sometimes even less, but I think by then I'd been conditioned in such a way as to not really concern myself with specific places'.
Patricia's motivations for relocating to Nailsea were not steeped in a yearning to live in Nailsea, which was neither represented as a unique place or a preferred type of settlement. Rather, she expressed a lack of attachment to Nailsea, emphasising the functional convenience of transport infrastructures in the area:

'The reason we came here (to Nailsea) I suppose is because we had no fixed roots in Britain, it didn't really matter where we went…we chose Nailsea because it has a station, it's near the motorway and it's near the airport so that if we wanted to get around we could…'
Characteristic of Patricia's narrative account is the continuity of high levels of residential mobility across both childhood and adulthood life stages that led to a sense of being 'conditioned' to a normality of high residential mobility and feelings of placelessness. Her rationale for living in Nailsea contrasts with the access to rural recreation emphasised by David's above; for Patricia, Nailsea was selected because it was relatively easy to access and depart from using local transport infrastructure.

The role of life-place trajectories in informing responses to place change -the power line proposal
The ways in which the life-place trajectories may shape participants' experiences and responses to proposals for place change were investigated using thematic analysis. What was pertinent in this regard was the way in which particular trajectories related with distinct ways of representing the countryside around Nailsea (the immediate location where the power line would be sited), which were in turn more or less congruent with representations of the proposed power line, with competing representations about it's 'fit' within the community (Batel & Castro, 2015) -see Table 2 for a summary of these findings.

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15 Those interviewees with life-place trajectories comprising an up-bringing and long-term residence in Nailsea (Long-term residence and Return to the Home Place) tended to express the traditional or traditional-active varieties of place relation, and represented the countryside around Nailsea as already replete with electricity infrastructure (i.e. the existing 132kV power line to the west of the town). For example Phil commented: 'As long as I can remember there were pylons in the countryside around Nailsea, they're nothing particularly new…I think the countryside around Nailsea is beautiful, but the pylons that are there already have always been part of it'.
These individuals represented power lines as a 'familiar' form of place change that did not threaten the scenic beauty of the countryside. Caroline linked this to her stance towards the new power line: 'It's not going to be something that unusual you know because we've already got pylons around Nailsea…I mean people are used to seeing pylons in the countryside, they're nothing out of the ordinary…I don't see it (the power line proposal) as having much of an impact on the outlying countryside, no, I'm not all of a sudden going to be saying 'Oh, look at that ghastly thing, don't build it here'.
This suggests that the power line proposal was seen by these individuals to fit with representations of the nearby countryside, and that the project was deemed acceptable on this basis. This finding supports existing studies showing that when a proposed technology is represented to be 'in place' rather than 'out of place', and congruous with the existing character of a place, then project acceptance has been found to ensue (Devine-Wright, 2011a, 2011bMcLachlan, 2009;Venables et al., 2012).
By contrast, those participants who had moved to Nailsea as adults and sought continuity across semi-rural settlement types -those with active attachment to Nailseaplaced great value on the aesthetic beauty of nearby countryside areas and the use of these locales for recreational activities. These participants tended to represent the countryside around Nailsea, despite the existence of the pylons referred to above, as 'natural', 'scenic' and 'picturesque', and interpreted the power line proposals as having a negative 'industrialising' impact on the area (see . As Janice remarks: '…it's going to be incredibly ugly, and out of proportion, and industrial and all the things that you don't expect to see in the countryside…it's going to be out of character with the whole of the surrounding area, with somewhere that's natural…' For Janice, the power line proposal will 'industrialise' a place seen as 'natural' and render surrounding countryside areas unsightly and unenjoyable for recreational activities. This supports existing research showing that a lack of congruence, or fit between place and project-related meanings, particularly a nature/industry binary, can engender opposition (McLachlan, 2009;Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010;Anderson, 2013;.

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For participants whose life-place trajectories were associated with weak or nonattachment to Nailsea and the surrounding countryside, perceived fit between representations of the surrounding countryside and the power line proposal was not a prominent theme(s) in the interviews. However, these participants still objected to the power line on the grounds of an unfair planning process (procedural injustice) and a perceived imbalance between local costs and benefits (distributive injustice), both of which are themes found in previous studies (Cotton & Devine-Wright, 2011;Devine-Wright, 2013;Aas, et al., 2014;Knudsen et al, 2015;Lima, 2006;Mannarini et al., 2009;Walker et al, 2014). A prominent concern expressed related to the point in time at which Nailsea residents were first consulted. The first phase of consultation took place between October 2009 and January 2010 and aimed to gain feedback from local communities on two route corridor options, both involving overhead lines. This was seen as limiting the capacity for local residents to shape decision-making around alternative siting options, such as underground or undersea routes. As Martin -representing the discontinuity in settlement type trajectory -comments: 'We were given a limited choice from the start, it's either this one or that one, you choose. They'd done all their planning and scheming behind the scenes and they came out with these two overhead options and I think people felt those options were very limited...why weren't we consulted on that? It seems to be the set formula they [National Grid] use to sort of bat away any interference but it's not satisfactory'.
The sense that decision-making regarding the power line was limited and unfair fuelled objection amongst these participants. This supports existing studies that show how procedural injustice regarding the siting of power lines results in project opposition (e.g. Knudsen et al., 2015). For participants with weak attachment to Nailsea, a perceived imbalance between local costs and benefits of the project were seen to result in a sense of distributive injustice and unfavourable views toward the proposed power line. As Gareth states: 'We've got this massive great grid line which is going to really spoil our landscape, but it's not for the benefit of this area. Apart from a few specialist jobs at the actual power plant [the proposed Hinckley Point C power plant], it seems to me we are getting all the disruption and none of the benefit'.
This supports quantitative studies that show a similar imbalance between costs and benefits can lead to feelings of distributive injustice and opposition to infrastructure proposals (e.g. Mannarini et al., 2009), and extends them by showing the prominence of non-place related, justice-based objections amongst those with weak or absent place relations.
The quote from Gareth above refers to negative impacts of the power line on 'our landscape', a statement that might be presumed to suggest place attachment. Generally, we propose that individuals with weak or absent place attachments referred infrequently to place related impacts in the interviews since they were less aware of, familiar with and concerned about potential impacts of the proposed power line on M A N U S C R I P T

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18 surrounding countryside areas. In Gareths' case, we interpret his discourse from a constructivist perspective to suggest that even individuals with weak or absent attachments to Nailsea will express their objections to energy infrastructures by drawing upon socially constructed ways of objecting to place change, including representations of rurality and local attachment. Furthermore, we would argue that this is evidenced by the way that place is invoked by Gareth in a general (i.e. referring to a 'landscape') rather than specific manner, lacking the detail that arises from autobiographical insideness with a particular place (Lewicka, 2014).

Discussion:
This research aimed to better understand the dynamics of people-place relations across the life-course -what we have termed life-place trajectories -and how these inform both current relations with the residence place and responses to change. Findings confirm that people relate to their current residence place in multiple ways, and that this can be better understood by exploring the temporal process-oriented development of people's place relations across the life course (Giuliani, 2003). People who had lived most or all of their lives in Nailsea tended to take the place largely for granted due to a lack of competing place experiences (Hummon, 1992). Such life-place trajectories were characterised by a high degree of immobility and rootedness in place, reminiscent of Gustafson's (2001) 'roots' theme, strong local social networks, and a notion of the 'home' place as an irreplaceable refuge. This echoes humanistic geographers' notion of place as a site of unreflective security, certainty and familiarity in otherwise insecure, unstable and nameless space (Dovey, 1985;Tuan, 1980). Those participants that moved to Nailsea as adults from similar and different types of place experienced continuity and discontinuity in generalised features of settlement types, resulting in the continued formation of active attachment for some, and place estrangement for others (i.e. identification with the place alienated and place relative varieties). The findings suggest that whilst continuity of valued settlement type can foster attachment to a new residence place, discontinuity can lead to alienation and place detachment. This echoes Twigger- Ross and Uzzell's (1996:208) concept of 'place-congruent' continuity, which suggests individuals strive to maintain continuity in place identity 'via characteristics of places which are generic and transferable from one place to another'. However, we found that some individuals expressed a novel form of place attachment that was simultaneously traditional and active. Individuals expressing this hitherto unidentified variety tended to evoke an unconscious bond with Nailsea and low involvement in the community, combined with interest in the goings-on of the place. These individuals typically grew up in Nailsea, moved elsewhere for short periods of time in early adulthood and experienced negative life events in those places, before returning to Nailsea seeking to resume a strong place bond and a social support network. This problematises what have been conceptualised as distinct ways of relating to the residence place (Hummon, 1992;Lewicka, 2011;Devine-Wright, 2013).

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19 Individuals with very high levels of residential mobility expressed indifference to past and present residence places, identifying with the placeless variety and expressing a tendency toward non-territorial identity formation (Lewicka, 2011). These individuals were emblematic of Gustafson's (2001) 'routes' theme, characterised by high residential mobility, absence of place attachment, and a general aversion toward place rootedness that had been 'conditioned' by a succession of childhood and adult life experiences.
Findings show that strong place attachment (and traditional place attachment in particular) is founded upon more than length of residence in the current place. It is founded upon continuity with the childhood and adolescent residence place (Hay, 1998a), and the continued existence of social support networks comprising family and friends that combine to form a residence pattern in which continuity in place is seen as 'natural' and the prospect of living elsewhere as 'unnatural'. These aspects relating childhood with adult place experience, alongside local social networks are typically overlooked by quantitative surveys that presume length of residence to be a proxy for strength of place attachment, and suggest the merit of future research that more closely joins up the concepts of interpersonal and place attachment (Scannell and Gifford, 2014).
Our findings highlight the interconnection between varieties of place relation and settlement identities (Feldman, 1990) for individuals whose biographies comprise multiple residence places. Findings suggest that it is perceived continuity or discontinuity of preferred settlement type that is significant in influencing bonds with the current residence place and consequent feelings of active attachment, alienation or relative ambivalence. Findings also highlight the importance of taking into account the socio-cultural and institutional dimensions of people-place relations , given that participants drew on wider discourses of what cities or countryside areas are commonly thought to represent (e.g. urban as 'energy' or 'buzz' vs. rural as 'tranquillity'; industry vs. nature), discourses that have historically shaped cultural representations about the countryside and the industrialization movement, specifically in Britain, and are reflected in people's representations of and relations with place.
The findings suggest that the experience of multiple residence place relocations during childhood and adulthood preclude the formation of settlement identities, to the extent that no continuity of settlement type seems to become possible as an adult since no pattern is sought or valued. Instead, these individuals become conditioned to a state of placelessness, in which a life-narrative is adopted that views detachment from place as 'natural' and long-term residence as 'unnatural'. This way of relating to the place is surprisingly persistent existing in the case of one participant for the duration of the 10 years lived in Nailsea (see quote from Patricia above).

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20 This paper also aimed to investigate the significance of life-place trajectories for understanding responses to proposed changes to a place, in this case from a power line proposal. Findings show that those people who had lived most or all of their lives in Nailsea tended to accept the proposed power line given familiarity with existing electricity infrastructure in the area. Those that grew up in Nailsea were more likely to have known about the existing 132kV power lines that run through the Western and Northern parts of the surrounding countryside. They are likely to have become familiar with the common-place visual presence of existing electricity infrastructure and represented these as blending into the nearby countryside. This corroborates existing research that suggests perceived fit between a place and project -when a proposed technology is seen to be 'in place' rather than 'out of place' (Cresswell, 2004) -renders energy projects more acceptable (see McLachlan, 2009;also Venables et al., 2012)see Table 2 for a summary of these findings.
This study supports existing research that has shown how place-based opposition arises amongst actively attached residents (Devine-Wright, 2013). For these individuals, collective protest against proposals for place change would seem to be highly compatible with the 'active localism' that underlies their bonds with the residence place (Lewicka, 2013). Yet it also requires these individuals to view a lack of congruence between place and project-based symbolic meanings, and a contrast between 'natural' countryside and 'industrial' energy infrastructure (Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010;MacLachlan, 2009;. This is seen to arise from a life-place trajectory continually centred in semi-rural locations, where countryside locales are valued for their scenic and natural attributes, and where energy infrastructure is seen to be distinctly out of place and unwelcome (Cresswell, 2004). A similar finding emerged in a study by McLachlan (2009), showing that opposition to a wave energy project in Cornwall stemmed from a lack of fit between symbolic meanings attributed to place and technology. A 'symbolic logic of opposition' arose when the wave device was seen as an 'experimental' form of technology in a place seen as 'natural'.
What is intriguing is the way that the existing power line was viewed by different participants, with different outcomes for their responses to the power line. For traditionally attached residents, it is such a normal feature of the locality as to be relatively invisible, blending into the background of the place and taken for granted. For actively attached residents, it is also relatively invisible, yet arising from a tendency to essentialise the countryside as a purely natural and pristine place (see , and one that would then be spoiled by the 'industrial' character of the new power line proposal.
Project opposition was also prevalent amongst non-attached individuals, but arose more from perceived procedural and distributive injustice than on place-based grounds. Those with non-attached life-place trajectories tended to develop weak or absent place relations with Nailsea, which may subsequently render place and project-related meanings less salient in instances of proposed place change. Nevertheless, these participants also objected to the power line but tended to express arguments on justice related grounds rather than aspects of the place, appearing less aware of or interested M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 21 in the potential positive or negative impacts of the proposed power line on the character of the nearby countryside.
To conclude, this study sought to extend the literature on process aspects of peopleplace relations, noting a preponderant 'structural' approach by research to date, both on place attachment and community responses to the siting of energy infrastructures (Devine-Wright, 2014;Giuliani, 2003). This research contributes to the literature in four ways: by showing the value of the narrative interview method, which was particularly useful in showing different patterns of place relations across the life course and their role in shaping and better understanding people's current relations to the residence place and responses to proposed place change; by revealing novel 'life-place trajectories' characterised by diverse configurations of residential mobility and continuity of settlement type; by extending our understanding of varieties of relationship with the current residence place, including identifying a novel variety of 'traditional-active attachment' that combines an unconscious bond with Nailsea and low involvement in community activities, with interest in the goings-on of the place; and finally by indicating the relevance of the trajectories for understanding responses to place change proposals, showing that the degree of fit between place and project meanings informed responses to the power line project.
The findings present many avenues for future research. The single case study design enabled depth of analysis, but exposes the research to the particularity of place. In this case, core to the responses of traditionally attached residents was the perceived familiarity of electricity infrastructure arising from the longstanding local presence of the smaller 132kV power line. Future research can examine this distinction in another context where the proposed form of change might be less easily regarded as already familiar and 'normal' in the place (or unfamiliar and abnormal by actively attached). Future research can also investigate the novel life-place trajectories (and one novel hybrid variety of place relation), both in the UK and in other cultural contexts, since our results do not preclude the possibility of additional trajectories being identified. Our research indicates the value of adopting a narrative interview method for researching life-place trajectories; future research can employ this method, which employed a standardised and replicable procedure, along with longitudinal designs and the development of novel quantitative measures that capture settlement continuity (and discontinuity) across the life-course. Future research can thus confirm and extend these findings, using qualitative and quantitative methods, both to inform theoretical understanding of people-place relations and applied practices of infrastructure siting and land-use change.