Attachment to our home town runs deep – so what happens when it faces dramatic change?

Attachment to our home town runs deep – so what happens when it faces dramatic change?

When the news broke in the autumn of 2023 that the blast furnaces at the steelworks in Port Talbot, south Wales, were closing, the headlines were laced with emotion: “devastating”, “fear”, “end of an era”. For many in the town, it wasn’t just the loss of 3,000 jobs, it was as though part of the town’s identity was being taken away. Such emotional reactions are not just nostalgia or sentimentality. They’re a powerful example of what researchers c…