Living Connected to Place and Why It Matters Now
Over time, I’ve come to realize that downturns in my mood are often related to feeling disconnected. Maybe I’ve been working hard and not paying as much attention to my family or not seeing friends. I may be talking with others on Zoom, but it’s not the same felt sense of connection as being together in person.
There can also be a sense of separation from my physical surroundings. Online and staying indoors, I lose sight of the community and nature just out the door. The remedy seems simple— get outside and connect to the place where I live.
I know from research and experience how valuable connecting to place is to our health and well-being, but it can be a struggle to connect in tangible, meaningful ways to all that is around us. Perhaps you can relate, as how we have shaped modern society has much to do with this fading sense of connection in our lives.
In a tiny blip of human history, a profound shift in how we live and relate to the places we live has taken hold. Car dependency, digital devices, and consumerism have firmly taken root in our society and lives. For those with resources, the standard of living, when defined as convenience, comfort, an abundance of goods, and massive amounts of information at one’s fingertips, has arguably improved.
At a fundamental level, however, these current patterns of living have eroded our relationships with each other and with nature in our local context. A growing sense of placelessness has arisen in modern society. When so much of our time is spent in cars, indoors in private spaces, buying and managing stuff, in the digital realm, and on social media, we can easily become disconnected from what surrounds us in the real physical world and our community. It’s no coincidence that we now face a an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, harming individual and community health.
It’s not just our personal well-being that has been affected. The exploitation of nature and people, as well as social division, are embedded in the systems that shape society and our ways of living.
Rising and troubling social divisions have emerged. Separation from community and people with different lived experience plays a role. Car-centric land use patterns with exclusionary zoning keep many people separated from community life and also from one another along socioeconomic, racial, and political lines. We’re vulnerable to see other human groups in a negative light when we exist in separate places. Politicians have exploited this separation with such vitriol that our divisions have become polarized, toxic, and even dangerous.
The degradation of nature or our life support system and the climate crisis are directly linked to our disconnected ways of living that are resource and energy-intensive. A deeper cause of environmental decline relates to our lack of connection with nature in daily life. The alienation from nature extends into our economic system as natural resources are often extracted and processed far away from where products and energy are consumed. The damage to nature is hidden from most consumers, but it harms communities with less power near these operations. This disconnectedness has led to an illusion that we are separate from nature, ignoring how we depend on and are part of nature at our own peril.
The dominant societal narrative suggests that these resource-intensive ways of living are here to stay and will expand. The surge in AI development and energy- and water- intensive data centers to support it reinforce this narrative. Yet, there is a clear alternative we can each support in our own way– resetting our relationship with nature, community, and the local economy in the places where we live. It’s about finding our way back into balance with nature and community through paying more attention to them in them in daily life.
Living connected to place provides an antidote to alienation, as the heart of our crises, by increasing and deepening our daily interaction with what exists in the real world around us. Making this shift involves changing how we live, but it is intuitive and flows naturally when anchored in values for connection, place, nature, and community.
We know how to do this. It’s deep in our DNA. For well over 99% of human history, people were deeply connected to the places where they lived. Over the millennia, human communities developed an intimate and regenerative relationship with local nature. Daily life was characterized and made more meaningful through interaction and interdependence among people in their local community. These are indigenous ways of living that have been overpowered and nearly erased by colonialism and global capitalism.
Strengthening our connection to place invites us to firmly embed ourselves in our physical surroundings and the nearby human community. It can be practiced in all aspects of life— shopping at local businesses; walking, biking, and using public transit; eating food and buying goods from local and regional sources; using and conserving energy generated on rooftops or from within our regions; treasuring and sharing what we have and reducing waste; and, as much as possible, living, working, and recreating locally. Everyday life actions can feel mostly like chores and routines, but they can also enhance connection and meaning in our lives.
In 'The Localization Reader: Adapting to the Coming Downshift', Raymond DeYoung and Thomas Princen of the University of Michigan refer to this as localized living in which “people’s attention focuses on everyday behavior within place-based communities.” They characterize localization as “an affirmative social trend, driven by biophysical realities and accepting of the innate human inclinations for self-provisioning and commitment to place.” It’s a movement to live more reasonably within the limits of sustaining our planet, doing less harm to others, and regenerating nature, community, and local economies.
When we travel less distance in cars, support local businesses, and seek out local community and nature, we emit less greenhouse gases, deplete fewer natural resources, strengthen the social fabric of our communities, and reduce inequality through patronizing local businesses more and multinational corporations less. When we anchor our lives in a place and connect to all it offers, we go from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution.
The transition to living connected to place requires personal change, such as reducing time behind the wheel and in ride shares, resisting the temptation of one-click shopping on Amazon, spending less time indoors using energy, and buying less stuff. Given how embedded these ways of living are in society, it may feel like sacrifice at first, but the rewards of increased connection and well-being will outweigh any sense of loss over time.
Substantial research has found that regular connection with nature enhances physical, mental, cognitive, and emotional health. The benefits extend to nature as connecting with it motivates us to be good stewards and live in ways that regenerate rather than deplete it. We protect what we love and love only what we know.
By engaging with community in our place, relationships are built and shared purpose is found, important sources of personal and community well-being. This engagement can lead to opportunities to help others and regenerate our communities, adding further happiness and meaning to our lives.
Living connected to place supports local businesses and organizations and thus can narrow economic inequality by providing more people access to ownership and meaningful place-based employment. Careers and jobs can become bolstered by regional and local economies, not by the whims of the global economy and corporations focused on quarterly profit growth and cost-cutting.
Changing how we live and becoming deeply rooted in our places can help us push back against the dominant systems that support current unsustainable, unjust ways of life. We stand firm by being aware of the impact of our choices and being a positive force for change. We break down divisions and create hope for a better future when we step away from our screens and cars and engage with local community and nature. We align with the fundamental forces of life and connectedness, knowing that our well-being is deeply intertwined with the health of our communities and nature.
In preparation for writing 'Connected to Place', I wrote profiles on fourteen people I interviewed to show what living connected to place looks like and how a narrative around its benefits can be a means to lessen resistance to change (which is so hard for us humans!). The people I profiled are living connected to place in different aspects of their lives and enjoying the benefits that come with it. Their stories show how place-based living can occur across a variety of daily life activities and professional pursuits and diverse residential settings and arrangements. They find meaning in what they do and how they live that nourishes them. Joined by others, they reconnect to a sense of hope in a troubled world. They are not acting in these ways out of sacrifice but with purpose, satisfaction, and joy.
People living connected to place, like the ones I profiled, aren’t just living in these ways through personal will and conviction. Intention is important, but insufficient to live in place-based ways. Human behavior is heavily dependent on context. Living connected to place depends on place-based systems that provide the physical, cultural, social, and economic conditions for living in such ways. Each of the people I profiled benefitted from elements of place-based systems where they lived.
The place-based systems featured in 'Connected to Place' make it possible to live close to where one works, shops, and plays and provide regular opportunities to experience nearby nature and community. The systems also support strong local economies in which local businesses predominate and food, energy, and consumer goods are produced and consumed within the surrounding region. When these systems are present, people can live with a much smaller ecological footprint, stronger bonds to local community and each other, and more meaning, happiness, and hope.
The road to realizing these systems is riddled with barriers related to power, land use, culture, and silos. 'Connected to Place' surfaces those barriers and shows, with many real world examples, how we can overcome them to create a society rooted in the regeneration of nature, community, and local economies.
In the new book, 'Connected to Place: Regenerating Nature, Community, and Local Economies through Systems Change' (Cornell University Press), Matt distills his research and work on place-based systems into the why, what, and how of a regional and local approach to systems change. The book offers a positive vision of place-based living for addressing our biggest challenges and shows us how we can get there, engaging both ‘the heart’ and ‘the head’. Matt shares tools and insights that transform change efforts into systems-level impact, regenerating nature, community, and local economies.
'Connected to Place' has been featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Matt regularly speaks about place-based systems change and ways of living at events and on podcasts.
More information on Matt and 'Connected to Place' is available at www.connectedtoplace.com.
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Author: Matt Biggar
Really nice post.
This really resonated with me. The way you connect personal well-being, community health, and environmental resilience through “place” feels both timely and deeply human. I especially appreciated how you highlighted everyday actions—like shopping locally, walking more, and engaging with nearby nature—as practical entry points rather than abstract ideals. It’s a hopeful reminder that meaningful change doesn’t always require grand gestures, but consistent attention to where and how we live. Thank you for articulating this so clearly.
Thank you, Diana! I appreciate your takeaways and strong sense of the flow of living connected to place.