Between Loss and Hope - essay on Place Grief

Between Loss and Hope: Exploring the Role of Leisure and Tourism Professionals in Addressing Place Grief through Meaningful Experiences during Urban Transitions

A reflective essay, written by Roos Gerritsma (PD-candidate and lab lead Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam (North), with the help of ChatGPT*

This essay is not a finish line, it is a work in progress and an invitation to all to hold space for place grief in cities and its communities, that face various types of transformation. Coming years we will further explore and experience different aspects of this specific type of grief.

“We go for the yes people” –

This phrase was one of the conclusions of a group of tourism professionals in the city of Amsterdam, taking part in a workshop on regeneration (Ensut, 2024). It repeatedly kept resurfacing in my mind. The message of the tourism professionals was clear: work with people who are willing to engage, innovate and co-create new futures. Yet, the statement also raised a troubling question for me. What about the people who say no?

What about those who experience urban change not as opportunity but as loss? What about residents who struggle to recognize their neighborhood, who see familiar buildings disappear, who witness social networks dissolve, or who feel increasingly disconnected from the place they once called home?

As researchers and practitioners working with urban regeneration, placemaking and tourism development, we often celebrate transformation. We talk about innovation, sustainability, resilience and future-making. Far less attention is paid to what disappears in the process.

This essay explores the concept of place grief (Gerritsma, Bouw & Hes, 2024) and reflects on the role that leisure and tourism professionals might play in helping communities navigate experiences of loss during urban transitions. Drawing on research, co-creative design experiences from Amsterdam North, emerging scholarship on grief, place attachment and urban transformation, I argue that leisure and tourism professionals may have an important yet largely overlooked role. Not as drivers of change, but as facilitators of meaning-making, remembrance and collective hope. Not merely hope, but deliberately designing for hope and cultivating active hope practices in processes of urban change (Macey & Johnstone, 2022, Hes & Plessis, 2015).

Urban Transitions and the Experience of Loss

Cities are living systems. They are never finished; they are constantly in the process of becoming (Lin, 2026). Across Europe, cities are undergoing multiple transitions simultaneously. Housing shortages, climate adaptation, energy transitions, demographic changes and economic restructuring are reshaping urban environments at unprecedented speed. Amsterdam North exemplifies this process. Former industrial sites have been transformed into residential districts, new populations continue to arrive, and long-standing social and spatial structures are being reconfigured. Besides that, Amsterdam North is appointed to become one of the new city centers, partly with a view to spreading out the number of visitors to the city (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2022).

While many celebrate these developments, not everyone experiences them positively. Urban transitions often create winners and losers. New investments may increase quality of life for some while generating feelings of displacement, exclusion or alienation for others. Residents may mourn the disappearance of familiar landscapes, social relations, cultural practices or neighborhood identities.

Many residents of Amsterdam North have expressed feelings of losing their sense of home due to the transition of their city district. I encounter these expressions frequently, such as via (local) social media, in contact with activist groups and policymakers and during our lab place exploration and sense-making activities (Gerritsma, Horgan, Bouw, 2024) each semester. Such emotional responses are increasingly described through concepts such as place attachment, place loss and place grief.

Place attachment refers to the emotional, social and symbolic bonds that individuals and communities develop with places (Scannell & Gifford, 2010). When places undergo significant transformation, these attachments can be disrupted. Albrecht (2005) introduced the concept of solastalgia to describe the distress people experience when their home environment changes while they remain physically in place. Unlike nostalgia, which involves longing for a place left behind, solastalgia refers to the grief experienced when the place itself changes around you.

Yet despite growing academic attention, place grief remains largely absent from urban development practice. Planning processes frequently include participation, consultation and co-design activities. However, they rarely acknowledge grief as a legitimate response to change. There is often space for discussing future visions, but little room for mourning what has been lost.

Regeneration as Healing and Restorative practice

My own understanding of this issue began to shift during a professional training program on moving beyond polarization (Really Regenerative Centre, 2024) that was focused on regenerative reconciliation and place development. One exercise asked participants to imagine how cities might heal the stories of separation between humans and nature, and between humans and one another. The exercise suggested that regenerative futures are not solely about ecological restoration but also about social inclusion, community resilience, belonging and healing. At the time, I found the concept of healing inspiring, but also still highly abstract.

How exactly do places and their communities heal? How can urban professionals contribute to healing when the systems they work within are often focused on efficiency, growth and measurable outcomes? Over time, I began to realize that regeneration is not only about creating something new. It is equally about acknowledging what has been damaged, neglected or lost. In this sense, regeneration requires confronting grief.

This insight resonates strongly with the work of Flatland’s descriptions of various roles during transitions (2026) and Machado de Oliveira’s work on Hospicing Modernity (2021). They both describe the role of the hospice worker as someone who accompanies the dying of an old system. Rather than denying collapse or clinging to the past, the hospice worker honors what existed, recognizes the pain associated with change and helps people navigate transitions with dignity and care. A hospice worker recognizes the value of what has been and helps people to let go of it gently. They understand that grief is part of the transition, are empathetic, skilled in conducting rituals, and ensure that the past is brought to a dignified close.

Could leisure and tourism professionals act, in some ways, as hospice workers for places? Could this be part of the restorative phase towards regeneration? See image below, translated by ChatGPT, original in Dutch (Regenerative Futures, 2026).

Leisure an Tourism Professionals as Facilitators of Meaning

Traditionally, leisure and tourism are associated with enjoyment, entertainment and memorable experiences. Yet contemporary scholarship increasingly highlights their broader social role. Experiences can foster a sense of belonging, strengthen identity, stimulate dialogue and support community development. If urban transitions involve emotional as well as spatial change, perhaps leisure professionals have a role that extends beyond creating attractive experiences. Perhaps they can help communities process change?

This does not imply becoming therapists or social workers. Rather, it suggests designing situations in which people can share stories, reflect on transformations and collectively negotiate meanings attached to changing places. Experiences become meaningful when they resonate with identity, memory and values. This perspective shifts attention away from consumption and towards connection. The concepts of memory, identity, and place form key debates in geographical literature (Ratman, 2018) because they link people to place. Memory incorporates narratives of the past that are articulated in the present day and can inform the way identities are constructed. The intersections of memory and identity can prompt us to think about how we experience and/or have experienced place(s). Local artists often use their work to represent the area’s identity. Research in place-based design suggests that residents are often the most authentic narrators of their environments due to their lived experiences and contextual knowledge (Zukin, 2010).

In the context of urban transitions and (regenerative) tourism, meaningful experiences may create opportunities for residents to articulate what a place means to them, what they fear losing and what they hope for in the future. Conversely, this can help visitors gain a better understanding and deeper connection of the place they are visiting.

Learning from Amsterdam North

Together with students and colleagues of the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab, I was involved in the co-creation of several interventions conducted in Amsterdam North that illustrate this potential:

-Through an interactive installation of the exhibition Steel, Stones and Voices (2025) at the Museum Amsterdam North, visitors were invited to reflect on industrial heritage that had disappeared due to urban redevelopment. Participants shared memories, associations and ideas regarding the future use of remaining industrial sites.

-During the event 24 Hours North (2025, DMO Amsterdam&Partners), visitors explored past, present and future versions of the Buikslotermeerplein through virtual reality experiences, historical imagery and facilitated conversations about what should be preserved and what should change.

-Residents as storytellers are part of various lab interventions, such as via podcasts on the story benches at the Hema-square (2024) and at the Amsterdam North museum (2025). Under the guidance of a professional storyteller, Berber Hidma, residents were asked to share their stories of Amsterdam North during our festive evening market (December 2025).

Although different in form, these interventions shared a common characteristic. They created spaces where loss and future-making could coexist. To me, one of the most surprising outcomes of the latter, was people’s willingness to engage. Visitors often spent extensive periods sharing memories, concerns and hopes. Conversations emerged not only between participants and facilitators but also among residents themselves.

What became visible was not simply nostalgia. Rather, these encounters revealed a profound need for recognition. Recognition that feelings of loss are legitimate. Recognition that urban transformation is not only a technical process but also an emotional one.

From Place-Making to Regenerative Place-Making

Recent place-making research provides additional insight into why such interventions matter. Feola et al (2023) conceptualize place-making as an ongoing interaction between collective memories, future visions and place framing. Places acquire meaning through the dynamic relationship between how they are remembered, imagined and represented. It highlights that the future cannot be separated from the past. Future visions are built upon collective memories, while collective memories influence how people interpret future possibilities.

However, from a regenerative perspective, place-making alone may not be sufficient. Regenerative placemaking goes beyond creating attractive or vibrant places (Hes et al, 2020 and Gerritsma, 2025). It seeks to strengthen relationships between people, communities and ecosystems while fostering long-term stewardship and reciprocity. Such an approach requires acknowledging uncomfortable emotions alongside aspirations and opportunities. It asks not only what kind of place we want to create, but also what forms of healing may be necessary before transformation can be embraced.

Grief, Meaning and Collective Hope

Insights from grief studies further illuminate this process. Although the Five Stages of Grief model developed by Kübler-Ross (1969) remains widely known, later work by her and Kessler (2005) emphasizes that grief is not a linear process. Individuals move through different emotions in different ways and at different times.

Importantly, Kessler (2019) proposes a sixth stage: meaning. Finding meaning does not eliminate loss. Rather, it allows people to integrate loss into an ongoing narrative of life. This insight may be particularly relevant for urban transitions. Reckwitz (2025) illustrates how loss is an inherent part of modernity in general and how the belief in constant progress has ceased to be taken for granted.

Communities do not necessarily need to overcome place grief. Instead, they may need opportunities to transform grief into shared meaning. This is where leisure and tourism interventions can contribute. Through storytelling, heritage interpretation, participatory arts, rituals, co-creating new local traditions, temporary installations, festivals and community-based experiences, leisure professionals can create conditions in which memories are acknowledged and future possibilities explored simultaneously.

In this sense, meaningful experiences become mechanisms for collective sense-making.

Towards a Regenerative Leisure & Tourism Practice

The experiences described here have altered my understanding of the leisure and tourism profession. Increasingly, I see leisure professionals not primarily as producers of experiences but as facilitators of relationships and systemic change. They collect stories before they disappear. They create encounters between groups who rarely meet. They make invisible emotions visible. They design rituals that help communities honor the past while engaging with the future. Within regenerative urban transitions, their role may therefore be less about accelerating change and more about humanizing it.

My Lab Loops for Life framework (Gerritsma, 2025) reflects this orientation. By connecting education, co-creation, experimentation and community engagement through iterative loops, it positions urban living labs as facilitators of regenerative processes rather than providers of predetermined solutions. Such approaches recognize that transformation emerges through relationships, dialogue and collective learning.

Conclusion: Becoming Hospice Workers for Places?

The concept of place grief invites us to reconsider how we approach urban transitions. If cities are living systems, then transformation inevitably involves loss as well as creation. Some places disappear. Some identities shift. Some stories fade. Ignoring these experiences risks deepening feelings of alienation and polarization. Acknowledging them, however, may open pathways towards connection, healing and collective hope.

This leads me back to the question that initiated this reflection.

What about the people who say no?

Perhaps they are not resisting change itself. Perhaps they are asking for recognition of what is being lost? If regeneration is ultimately about restoring places and relationships, then listening to these voices may be essential. In that context, the leisure and tourism professional becomes more than an experience designer. They become a facilitator of remembrance, dialogue and meaning-making. A bridge between memory and imagination. Between grief and active hope. Perhaps, in times of profound urban transformation, they even become hospice workers for places.

I wrote this reflective essay, halfway-through my PD-trajectory (June 2026). For the second half of my trajectory, I will continue seeking ways to share the core insights of this essay with my colleagues, students, the ULT-lab Amsterdam’s ecosystems and fellow professionals.

*As this essay is – basically – about reflecting on dealing with change, I wanted to challenge myself in using AI for this essay. I practically never use ChatGPT, maybe because I am not used to it and have mixed feelings about the results – as it is never exactly as I would like to – its extractive nature of having to use data centers and sources, that aren’t always referred to in a proper academic way. Maybe also because AI is still very new to me, scares me (uncertain yet of how to perceive this LMM) and also because I am feeling attached to the hours, days, months I was able to take for writing texts, such as my PD-booklet. It gives me a sense of joy to be able to create something new, based on existing sources and new data and/or insights.

Using AI sparked a different feeling of joy; I was genuinely surprised by the speed of how fast it put my input into one piece – literally in a few seconds (!). Although I had to enrich this essay and developed four other versions, I am quite satisfied with this version. ChatGPT seemed to be able to read between the lines and created a coherent narrative by connecting my given input [see the compact overview & Timeline], prompts and found material online.

I suppose I am entering a transitional phase myself and learning to use AI in a meaningful and regenerative way.

 

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