Planning for place: Place attachment and the founding of rural community land trusts

This paper explores the role of place attachment in motivating residents of rural communities to form community land trusts (CLTs). CLTs are non-profit community-led organisations formed and managed by volunteers. Their objectives typically relate to the provision of affordable housing. Using qualitative interview data collected from 8 CLTs in rural England, this paper highlights the ways in which their founding members mobilise place attachments to form CLTs, define and target beneficiaries, and acquire resources to facilitate affordable housing development. Founding members perceive CLT housing as a vehicle through which visions and attachments of place can be articulated, using restrictions on resales, lettings and use to enhance and maintain place attachments whilst challenging conventional logics of market housing provision. While CLT objectives are explicitly derived from a desire to maintain, protect and enhance social and functional bonds to place, strong emphases on place attachment in the planning and allocation of rural housing may deny housing opportunities to those without such attachments. •Social, cultural, environmental and functional aspects of place attachment stimulate citizen participation in CLTs.•CLTs challenge conventional logics of housing provision, using restrictions on resales and lettings to retain affordability.•CLT housing is often prioritised for residents who hold social and/or functional attachments to place and community.•Place attachment helps CLTs acquire land and resources from those who share concern for and attachment to place and community.