Re‐imagining space: Conceptualizing new psychological interventions against segregationist attitudes and behaviours

Abstract

Drawing on theories, concepts and empirical evidence from the fields of human geography, social and environmental psychology, this paper argues for space‐based interventions as new psychological interventions aiming to address segregationist attitudes and behaviours among co‐located groups. The main premise of this argument is that engaging in spatial experiences that cause people to challenge their existing notions of place will impact socio‐spatial processes that propagate segregationist practices. These processes concern how people view and attach to their place and how they regard antagonistic groups vis‐à‐vis place. In presenting space‐based interventions, I first explain why space and place are relevant to intergroup interventions aiming at co‐existence and why, therefore, a ‘spatial shift’ in this realm holds promise. I then engage with three different types of space‐based activities stipulating their envisioned outcomes: (a) to know more about (the history of) a place; (b) to know the Other in relation to place; and (c) crossing physical and mental boundaries. I conclude with a critical reflection on factors that could impede space‐based interventions or undermine their effect, and how the potential of these interventions to engage the body and induce ‘ruptures’ could ameliorate these constraints.

INTRODUCTION

The societies we live in are not alien to intergroup tensions. Be they a result of long‐standing intergroup divisions due to a history of conflict or of increasing diversity resulting from displacement or chosen mobility of populations, these tensions present a challenge for social cohesion and the harmonious co‐existence of people who find themselves sharing space. Peaceful co‐existence requires that people who are different from one another, and especially those who see each other as the Other, find ways to ‘live with difference’ (Valentine, 2008). Exploring how the goal of living together with difference can be made possible in deeply divided places is at the core of this paper.

Social psychology's contribution to the question of harmonious co‐existence has naturally centred around addressing psychological conditions that disrupt it. One such ‘condition’ is prejudice, broadly defined as an antipathy towards certain social groups and their members (Allport, 1954), which has been demonstrated to contribute to full‐blown intergroup conflict through propagating discriminatory attitudes and behaviours (e.g. Brown, 1995). Consequently, the idea of prejudice reduction through psychological interventions presented itself as an obvious remedy to the social problems associated with prejudice (Paluck & Green, 2009).

The prejudice‐reduction interventions which received the most research attention to date are those building on Allport's intergroup contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954), according to which good‐quality contact between members of antagonistic groups can contribute to a reduction in antipathy between groups. With meta‐analyses supporting the effectiveness of both naturally occurring contact and contact‐based interventions to reduce prejudice (Lemmer & Wagner, 2015; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, 2008), contact has been regarded as social psychology's most promising proposal for addressing intergroup tensions (cf. Hammack, 2017).

Yet, a more critical outlook spanning the whole range of prejudice‐reduction interventions (including intergroup contact ones) challenges the knowledge produced so far by this line of research on both methodological and theoretical grounds. Aside from doubts about the size and durability of the effects of prejudice‐reduction interventions (Paluck et al., 2021), concerns are expressed about interventions being predominantly tested in the laboratory, thus casting doubt on how well they would fare in the real world (Paluck & Green, 2009). At a more theoretical level, psychological interventions have been criticized for treating prejudice as a disease from which individuals should be cured, thus sidelining structural reasons contributing to prejudice (Paluck et al., 2021). Related to this, a more critical outlook on contact research posits that the preoccupation of contact researchers with identifying what constitutes an ideal interaction and how to achieve it has led to ignoring how in deeply divided societies there exist multiple obstacles that do not allow for interactions to be ideal or even to occur at all (Dixon et al., 2025).

Importantly, the idea of interventions aiming at social change that concentrate solely on prejudice reduction has been challenged, with theorists calling for interventions that go beyond ‘curing’ prejudice (Dixon et al., 2005, 2012). Heeding this call, and mindful of the criticisms of psychological interventions outlined above, in this paper I attempt to approach the question of ‘living with difference’ through a new lens that puts the constructs of space and place at the centre of the inquiry. Such an approach to psychological interventions follows what has been termed as the ‘spatial shift’ in the social psychological study of intergroup relations (Di Masso et al., 2025), which acknowledges that the spatial and the social are dynamically related and favours studying and addressing intergroup behaviour in the very spaces where it manifests.

For the purposes of this paper, I draw on knowledge from research in: (a) human geography, seeking to understand the nature of intergroup encounters in shared everyday spaces (spaces of encounter), as well as whether there are types of spaces that advance deeper and more transformative encounters with the Other (e.g. Piekut & Valentine, 2017; Valentine, 2013); (b) social psychology, investigating the attitudes, emotions and behaviours people exhibit in spaces that are of intergroup significance. Of particular interest within this line of research are the socio‐spatial reasons leading people to exhibit segregationist behaviours (avoiding places or the Other in them) in spaces that could otherwise comprise shared spaces or spaces of encounter between groups (e.g. Bettencourt et al., 2019); (c) environmental psychology, exploring how views of place and different ways of attaching to it affect openness to change and to difference (e.g. Wnuk et al., 2023).

I draw on this interdisciplinary empirical evidence to propose a new type of psychological intervention, which I refer to as space‐based interventions, whose aim is to enhance people's ability to live with the Other through promoting socio‐spatial attitudes and ways of attaching to their places that buffer against exclusionary and segregationist behaviours and foster a greater openness to difference instead. As such, these interventions have the following key characteristics: (a) they are naturalistic, happening in the real world and more specifically in spaces that carry importance for intergroup relations; (b) they use space as a medium to instigate meaningful psychological changes that shape intergroup behaviour, and (c) they refrain from treating prejudice as the psychological ‘holy grail’ for harmonious intergroup relations and focus instead on offering people the opportunity to see space and place and the Other in them with a new lens—one that is conducive to conviviality.

In what follows, I will first provide a theoretical grounding for why interventions capitalizing on space and place hold promise for peaceful co‐existence, before detailing what the possible intergroup outcomes of space‐based interventions can be. I will then showcase how these outcomes can be achieved through space‐based activities, and will conclude with a critical discussion pertaining to key challenges to space‐based interventions and ways to counter them, to the extent possible.

SPACE, PLACE AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS

Spaces of encounter: Superficial vs. transformative contact

Following the ‘cosmopolitanism turn’ in geographical thinking, geographers began to celebrate the city as a site of difference, with the reasoning being that shared spaces promoting encounters between strangers held the potential for the creation of new hybrid cultures and new ways of living together with difference (Valentine, 2008, 2013). Weary of the optimism of a rather romanticized view of urban spaces as sites of difference, some theorists warned against the reproduction of the assumption that contact with the Other in shared spaces necessarily translates into respect for difference (Valentine, 2008).

Social psychological research on contact provides support for these concerns. Schäfer et al. (2021), for example, report that whereas contact predominantly happens in shared spaces, such as public places or at work, and while most of that contact is perceived as positive in a way that would support the potentialities of ‘being thrown together’ in shared spaces, not all contact happening in these spaces is of good quality. Relevant research has also shown that low‐quality (negative) contact can be more harmful to intergroup relations than positive contact is helpful (Barlow et al., 2012), especially when individuals are free to choose whether to opt in to contact (Paolini et al., 2024), which is often the case in urban spaces where people have relative freedom over their choices in navigating space.

Geography research on spaces of encounter concurs that merely sharing space does not lead to conviviality. It has also shown that the nature of contact in different spaces of encounter is dependent on the characteristics/affordances of different types of spaces. Many shared spaces are spaces of transit (e.g. city streets and public transport) that lead to superficial encounters, if any encounter at all (Amin, 2002). Such fleeting encounters in public and quasi‐public spaces often reinforce rather than combat stereotypes and discrimination (Matejskova & Leitner, 2011), even though there is also evidence that regular encounters with difference—albeit fleeting—can, if nothing else, normalize the presence of difference (Peterson, 2016) or promote what Koefoed et al. (2016) referred to as ‘habitual multiculturalism’. There are, on the contrary, shared spaces which engender a greater potential for sustained intergroup mixing and deeper contact, examples of which are spaces of worship as well as consumption and recreational spaces (Hołubowska & Poorthuis, 2024; Piekut & Valentine, 2017).

Addressing the question of which spaces are more conducive to meaningful encounters, geographers proposed the idea of spaces that promote interdependence (Amin, 2002; Matejskova & Leitner, 2011). According to Amin (2002), this is best achieved in micro‐spaces, such as libraries and community centres, where people from different backgrounds are brought together in a way that disrupts fixed patterns of interaction and enables conversations through which stereotypical and conflict‐perpetuating narratives can be challenged. He refers to those places as ‘micro‐publics’. Micro‐publics essentially abide by Allport's (1954) conditions for positive contact (i.e. contact happening under conditions of equal status, common goals, cooperation and authority support). Such conditions, however, rarely occur naturally, and designing spaces accordingly necessitates resources that are often not available (Peterson, 2016).

Taking note of how geography research matured over time from uncritically treating the city as a site of difference to the careful examination of which spaces enable transformative encounters with the Other (see Amin, 2002; Valentine, 2013), the problem of contact avoidance persists. To reap the fruits of spaces of encounter, individuals need to first enter those spaces and navigate them accordingly. An important question to address, therefore, is why contact is avoided in practice even in spaces which theoretically enable it. Partly, the answer lies in that the spaces where people meet are never free from history, material conditions and power (Valentine, 2008). Spaces, as Koefoed et al. (2016) put it, are associated with geopolitical imaginations that inevitably affect the likelihood, as well as the quality, of intergroup encounters. The question of contact avoidance and its socio‐spatial determinants is addressed by a separate line of research presented next.

Micro‐spaces of segregation: Why people avoid contact?

Credited with marking the spatial turn in psychological research on intergroup relations (Di Masso et al., 2025), the oft‐cited studies of Dixon and Durrheim (2003; 2005) in post‐Apartheid South Africa examined how Black and White individuals operated in relation to each other in formerly segregated, racially divided spaces, such as public beaches. Through these studies, they showed that despite formal desegregation coming into effect in the post‐Apartheid years, individuals engaged in (re‐)segregationist practices by avoiding intergroup encounters in those spaces. Subsequent research registered such segregationist behaviours in various other micro‐spaces (ranging from dining halls and lecture theatres to parks and squares) (see Bettencourt et al., 2019, for an overview). Importantly, these practices were observed in formally de‐segregated settings that could otherwise have comprised spaces of encounter. The key question to answer then was which factors drive people to avoid the Other in space.

Through a systematic review of studies examining segregationist behaviours, Bettencourt et al. (2019) identified recurrent psychological mechanisms that predict such behaviours in naturalistic settings. The first mechanism is negative outgroup attitudes and stereotyping, which lead individuals to anticipate negative—including exclusionary—behaviour from the outgroup in shared settings. An example cited is Blacks stereotyped by Whites as ‘aggressive’, and Whites stereotyped by Blacks as ‘racists’, with such stereotypes used to form predictions about the behaviour of the respective outgroup in shared spaces and to thus justify segregationist behaviours. The second is perceiving one's identity to be under threat in the presence of the outgroup, thus generating the need for territoriality, expressed in spatial practices, such as clustering in ‘ethnic’ spaces, with the aim of preserving one's group identity. The third factor pertains to feelings of anxiety, fear and insecurity about meeting the Other, stemming from expectations of negative (including awkward and humiliating) encounters or the prospect of feeling out of place. These expectations and the feelings of anxiety and fear they invoke, lead people to ‘hunker down’, that is to stick together with the those they identify with most and actively avoid contact with outgroups.

Dixon et al. (2022) added one more factor to the mix: place identity, which they present as encompassing a sense of belonging and attachment to a place expressed in notions of a place belonging to one's own group (‘our’ place). This kind of place‐identity/belonging renders individuals more attuned to noticing threats, which activate feelings of anxiety and behavioural avoidance as described above. It is also likely to generate a stronger divide between places considered one's own and places that belong to ‘them’. This idea—that people belong to one place or another—according to the same authors, influences the way one navigates spaces as well as emotions experienced in certain spaces. Feelings of captivity, for example, can occur when one feels compelled to avoid areas that are ‘theirs’, and feelings of anxiety, discomfort or being out of place occur when one enters those areas.

Attempting a more holistic explanation for why people resort to segregationist practices, Dixon et al. (2025) argue that people react with (re‐)segregationist behaviours (defensive and avoidance behaviours) when concerned that the spatial boundaries between themselves and the Other may be transgressed. They propose that these practices are the product of two different but interlinked paths. The first pathway, the psychological one, pertains to factors revolving around how people from different groups view one another (person–person relations); that is, with negative attitudes and stereotypical beliefs that serve to justify the need to keep away. The second pathway concerns factors pertaining to how people view place (person–place relations), and more specifically, the significance that place has for their own identity and its preservation. When people are faced with the prospect of boundary transgression, they become preoccupied with preserving or defending their place as theirs alone. Finally, Dixon et al. (2025) propose that to buffer against (re‐)segregationist practices and to promote more contact, both person–person and person–place relations need to be addressed.

SPACE‐BASED INTERVENTIONS TO ADDRESS SEGREGATIONIST ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOURS

In synthesizing research in human geography and social psychology examining everyday shared spaces, it becomes clear that researchers address two distinct yet inter‐related questions: geographers examine the nature of contact in spaces of encounter, as well as the potentialities and constraints of different types of spaces to promote meaningful contact, whereas psychologists seek to understand what causes contact avoidance in shared spaces and investigate ways to prevent it. My assertion is that these two lines of research converge and can inform each other when considering interventions that address the problem of ‘living with difference’.

Dixon et al. (2025) propose that interventions to address segregationist and exclusionary practices in shared spaces should do so by addressing both the person–person relations (how people from antagonistic groups view one another) and person–place relations (how people view places in relation to the Other). They furthermore remark that psychological interventions fostering positive contact, as well as contact‐positive norms, address person–person relations. The person–place relations pathway, they propose, can be addressed through urban‐design interventions that reconfigure the urban landscape, rendering it conducive to contact. They provide examples of such urban‐design interventions, including art‐based interventions replacing exclusionary symbols in public spaces, participatory place‐making activities, such as co‐designing shared spaces, and inclusive public places, such as restaurants and markets serving as spaces of encounter under conditions of equal status.

The approach to interventions put forward in this paper can be seen as responding to the call of Dixon et al. (2025) to address both the psychological and the geographical pathways to spatial exclusion, segregation and alienation. Unlike urban‐design interventions, which focus on changing or redesigning spaces to address person–place relations, space‐based interventions aim to advance a different way of ‘knowing’ a place through space‐based activities. Essentially, space‐based interventions are about inviting people to encounter or re‐encounter spaces which carry intergroup significance and where segregationist practices (avoiding places or the Other in them) are the norm. More specifically, space‐based interventions aim to engage individuals in spatial experiences that cause them to view (contested) places with a new lens—one that acknowledges the presence of the Other, as well as their own histories with these spaces and right to place.

What are the benefits of changing how one ‘knows’ a place?

My proposition is that if people are offered situated experiences that change how one ‘knows’ a place, this will challenge imageries, beliefs, emotions and practices about places and people‐in‐places. Thus, space‐based interventions are expected to contribute to the project of harmonious co‐existence by impacting processes that contribute to segregationist, exclusionary and discriminatory practices. Such processes, as pointed out earlier, include feelings of anxiety, fear and insecurity about finding oneself out of place and/or about the prospect of emplaced intergroup encounters that are negative (Bettencourt et al., 2019), a negative outlook on outgroups regarding their behaviour in shared spaces (Bettencourt et al., 2019), and a place identity that considers certain places as solely one's own and distinguished between places that are ‘ours’ and places that are ‘theirs’ (Dixon et al., 2022).

Knowing a place differently means advancing an understanding of places as a process (Varzi, 2021), as opposed to fixed and stable entities (a ‘thing’), and as open projects where alternatives are always possible—including new possibilities for belonging. In environmental psychology terms, this corresponds to the promotion of anti‐essentialist views of place (the belief that places should be open, dynamic and changing) (Lewicka et al., 2023) as well as a critical (active) attachment to one's place (Lewicka, 2011). I present these concepts in more detail next, as I believe them to be key foci of space‐based interventions.

Place attachment and views of place

Place attachment is generally defined as the emotional bond people have with a place (Low & Altman, 1992). Stronger place attachment has been found to link to greater social trust (Lewicka, 2013) and civic engagement (Lewicka, 2005), but also to higher aversion to changes to (the identity of) a place (Devine‐Wright, 2013). Similarly mixed are the findings for place attachment's connection to attitudes towards outgroups. On the one hand, stronger identification or attachment to one's place has been associated with higher bias towards people from other neighbourhoods (Bernardo & Palma‐Oliveira, 2016) and with lower migrant acceptance (Nijs et al., 2024; Storz et al., 2020). Contrary to these findings, Toruńczyk‐Ruiz and Martinović (2020) examined place attachment and higher collective psychological ownership (i.e. the sense that a territory belongs to one's group) in relation to attitudes towards international migrants, finding that higher psychological ownership was associated with negative outgroup attitudes, whereas stronger place attachment was more conducive to local participation and positively associated with higher openness to newcomers.

To help clarify the nature of the connection between place attachment and openness to difference, one important qualifier to consider is the conception of place attachment adopted. One conception posits that place attachment can take two forms: everyday rootedness and ideological rootedness (Hummon, 1992), which are distinguished essentially by how conscious or reflective one's emotional bond with the place is. These two ways of forming emotional bonds with place were conceptualized as two different types of attachment—namely, traditional and active place attachment, respectively—in the relevant literature (Lewicka, 2011).

Traditional and active place attachment are connected to the way one views one's (desired) place, adopting an essentialist or anti‐essentialist viewpoint. An essentialist viewpoint of what constitutes an ideal place favours stable features of a place and rootedness, as a source of meaning, whereas an anti‐essentialist account favours a view of place as open, dynamic and changing (Lewicka et al., 2023). Traditional place attachment relates to essentialist views of place—regarding a given place as a valuable and irreplaceable source—and is typically connected to territorialism (Wnuk et al., 2023). Active place attachment, on the other hand, is the result of a bottom‐up relationship with place. It refers to a critical attachment to place—one that accommodates different narratives about the place and is accompanied by a commitment to rediscovering it (Di Masso et al., 2019; Lewicka, 2011).

Research findings show that traditional place attachment is associated with less openness to outgroups in contexts of intractable conflict with territorial disputes (cf. Wnuk & Oleksy's, 2021 study with Israeli Jews and their attitudes towards Palestinians), as well as in contexts of migration, with host‐society members being less open to newcomers, including refugees (e.g. Wnuk et al., 2023's study with Polish nationals). The relationship between traditional place attachment and the need to keep distance from outgroups was furthermore found to be mediated by perceptions of cultural continuity threat (i.e. the fear that a place will lose its identity) (Wnuk et al., 2023). Active place attachment, on the contrary, was found to be positively associated with perceptions of historical continuity (Lewicka et al., 2023; Lewicka & Dobosh, 2021).

Discussing interventions directed at people who are traditionally attached to their place, Wnuk et al. (2023) suggest targeting the core characteristics of this type of emotional attachment to place that obstruct openness to change and difference. This can be done, they propose, by cultivating an understanding that changes to a place are a natural process—for example, by reminding people how a place has changed over time—as well as an understanding of space as a shared resource. They more specifically suggest guided walks, neighbourhood meetings and the use of technology (e.g. augmented reality) to showcase how a place has changed over time as activities that contribute to these goals.

How do space‐based intergroup interventions contribute to the goal of harmonious co‐existence?

Space‐based intergroup interventions is an umbrella term encompassing activities that contribute to the goal of enabling people to view place in relation to the Other in ways that buffer against exclusionary and segregationist practices and serve the purpose of peaceful co‐existence. In what follows, I present examples of space‐based activities, identifying three types of activities, each of which maps onto a specific outcome: (a) to know more about (the history of) a place; (b) to know the Other in relation to place; and (c) crossing physical and mental boundaries. In doing so, I also illustrate how different space‐based activities contribute to the aim of space‐based interventions; that is, to address segregationist attitudes and behaviours by affecting psychological mechanisms related to one's views of place and of the Other in place. This pathway is illustrated in Figure 1. Where possible, I provide examples of interventions from the literature that, in my view, fall under this category, to showcase the various forms space‐based interventions can take and to what end.

FIGURE 1.

Proposed pathway through which space‐based interventions (different types of space‐based activities) can influence segregationist attitudes and behaviours.

Knowing more about (the history of) a place: Learning through physical and virtual immersion in space

In a literal sense, changing how one knows a place requires adding new units of information to people's existing schema of a certain place. One faculty of knowledge that was found to be fruitful for intergroup relations is knowledge about the history of a place and, more specifically, knowledge about how the place changed over time (historical continuity). As discussed earlier, the realization that places are ever‐changing and that change is a natural process contributes to the development of active place attachment and the adoption of anti‐essentialist views of place (Lewicka et al., 2023; Lewicka & Dobosh, 2021), which are associated with greater openness to difference and tolerance to change (Wnuk et al., 2023).

One way in which this can be achieved is through educational activities that follow the principles of place‐based education, a pedagogical approach that utilizes the local environment alongside the cultural and historical information embedded in it as the context where new authentic learning is fostered (Sobel, 2004). Learning through immersion in space also has an experiential aspect. Experiential learning has been defined as learning in which the learner does not only read, hear or write about the realities of what is being studied, but encounters them as part of the learning process (Keeton & Pamela, 1978). Karn (2024), for example, has shown how experiential learning tied to places of historical significance elicited historical empathy, that is, the ability to understand the perspectives and experiences of historical actors.

Aligned with this approach are intergroup interventions, such as the one developed by the School of Dialogue in Poland, aiming to educate people about the historical past of their place of residence. Labelled as ‘contact with a multi‐cultural past’ and described in the work of Stefaniak and her colleagues (Stefaniak et al., 2017, 2021; Stefaniak & Bilewicz, 2016), these activities sought to facilitate learning about the heritage of the places people inhabit through direct and active engagement with the place itself. Such engagement takes the form of site visits and independent research in the neighbourhoods, including interviews with residents. The results of the meta‐analysis of a number of activities falling in the same category—‘contact with a multi‐cultural past’—(Stefaniak et al., 2022) attest to the effectiveness of this approach in fostering greater interest in local history, stronger place attachment and civic engagement intentions, as well as more favourable attitudes towards the main target outgroup of the interventions (Jews, in this example).

Increased knowledge about a place can be achieved through other means which do not require presence in the physical space. One promising avenue is through augmented reality (AR) technology, which accommodates human–space interactions in virtual spaces and thus enables learning about a place through virtual immersion in it. Studies already demonstrate that AR enhances the experience of history and heritage learning through immersion and interaction with virtually restored places or re‐enacted events (Challenor & Ma, 2019). Virtual human–space interactions have furthermore been found to strengthen one's sense of place (Chang et al., 2015), elicit historical empathy (Sweeney et al., 2018) and enhance place meaning (Oleksy & Wnuk, 2016). Augmented reality offers further affordances, including the possibility of experimenting with place transformations. Oleksy et al. (2024) explored these potentialities by testing informative alterations (providing information about a place's past and future) and transformative alterations (changing the appearance or use of a place), finding that higher active place attachment was positively associated with acceptance of both types of transformation.

Knowing the other in relation to place: Spatial encounters with otherness

To know the Other in relation to place is to acknowledge their past and present existence in the spaces they also inhabit, in ways that go beyond merely registering their presence which—as discussed earlier—is more likely to perpetuate than challenge stereotypes about the Other (Matejskova & Leitner, 2011). It involves acknowledging the Other as people who have their own histories with place and attachments to it (Zisakou et al., 2024), and who shape place and its identity in ways that are hard to appreciate unless one engages in meaningful encounters with them.

Geographical research has demonstrated how transformative spatial encounters are hard to achieve (Valentine, 2008), yet alternatives have been put forward. One such alternative proposes the creation or utilization of spaces which purposefully promote dialogue with voices that are absent from public space. Shaker Ardekani (2022) presents the idea of everyday urban spaces, including third spaces such as media, that provide platforms for those whose voices are not part of the dominant discourse to share their lived experiences and claim public space to speak (back).

An example of such a space is the Human Library, described as a safe space for open dialogue between ‘human books’ (volunteers who have experienced discrimination and stigma) and ‘readers’, who learn about the lived experiences of people who have experienced social exclusion. The Human Library enables narrative‐based encounters with the Other (Murrar & Brauer, 2019), that is, encountering and learning about the Other through their stories. Research has yielded positive effects of the Human Library intervention for outcomes related to co‐existence, such as reduced social distance (e.g. Groyecka et al., 2019, for Muslims in Poland; Orosz et al., 2016, for Roma in Hungary).

Even closer to the idea of space‐based interventions are activities that encompass encounters with the Other that are purposefully situated in spaces considered to be ‘theirs’. An example is the intervention described by Janzen et al. (2024), concerning visits to mosques with Muslim guides. The researchers underscore the importance of situating contact in places that form ‘projection surfaces for prejudice’ (p. 135), such as mosques. Merely entering such spaces constitutes a form of boundary crossing (discussed further below), but beyond that, participants come into contact not only with a member of the outgroup (the guide), but also with the spaces of the outgroup. Evaluating the effects of guided mosque tours on anti‐Muslim prejudice, Janzen et al. (2024) report short‐term effects on quantitative prejudice measures, as well as qualitative changes in participants' representations of Muslims, which became more informed in terms of religious content and contained fewer negative characteristics, such as associations with threat, terrorism or the oppression of women.

The above examples concern face‐to‐face spatial encounters with a single member of the outgroup placed in a position of knowledge (the ‘book’; the ‘guide’), thus functioning as what Wise (2009) refers to as ‘transversal enablers’: ordinary people in multicultural settings who produce ‘spaces […] where questions about different cultural practices can be asked in a safe environment’ (p. 24). Spatial encounters with the Other, however, can also occur without the physical presence of the Other. Petty (2016) notes that certain interventions in public space can create opportunities to be reminded of the presence of the Other and their relationship to a particular space. He refers to these as ‘moments of rupture’, moments when something breaks routine or becomes visible, prompting recognition of the Other's perspectives.

One example is the art‐based interventions of Gunter Demnig, known as Stolpersteine (stumbling stones). These are small memorial stones engraved into pavements across different localities to commemorate individual victims of the Holocaust at their former homes or workplaces. In addition to preserving the memory of atrocities, Stolpersteine highlight that the victims were once inhabitants of these spaces (Cook & van Riemsdijk, 2014). Installing the memorials in sidewalks, Cook and van Riemsdijk (2014) argue, forces people to encounter them by literally stumbling over the stones, compelling individuals to ‘deal with uncomfortable issues and mentally ‘stumble’ over the implications of the absence of the victims’ (p. 147). Assessing the effects of exposure to Stolpersteine, Ruipérez and Sauter (2022) found that people who viewed photographs of the stones reported stronger emotional reactions, such as anger and sadness, compared with a control group, and also expressed more positive attitudes towards other groups that had experienced marginalization and persecution, such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

‘Crossing the line’: Embodied boundary transgression

Dixon et al. (2025) advocate for interventions that ‘encourag[e] residents to ‘cross the line’, walk through the gate, and reimagine contested or unfamiliar spaces as shared’ (p. 19). Such interventions, they argue, promote a different understanding of space and place that is conducive to social change. Yet, there are spaces people do not go to and lines they do not cross, either because spaces are unfamiliar or contested, and/or because borders and lines—both physical and mental—serve a protective function. For people to cross the line into unfamiliar and contested spaces is a challenging task. First, it constitutes a violation of the status quo, a disruption of everyday routines, which can be distressing. Reid (2025), for example, describes how crossing the buffer zone of the de facto divided city of Nicosia generates feelings of anxiety and anger. A second obstacle is that crossings can constitute politicized acts and may therefore be judged as morally reprehensible (cf. Demetriou, 2007), or as acts of betrayal towards one's in‐group. Finally, in deeply divided societies, not knowing who is on the other side of the line can evoke fear arising from perceived danger and anxiety about strangers (Tuan, 1979).

I argue that physical line‐crossing cannot be facilitated solely through interventions aimed at changing people's cognitions about people and places. Rather, it requires an approach that implicates physical space as well as the body in space, for the simple reason that entering contested spaces is an act of line‐crossing that literally requires a body to move through space. One way to achieve this is through activities that enable multisensory and embodied engagement with place, fostering embodied knowledge (Bamford, 2024), including embodied memories of entering and being in particular spaces. This is especially important for overcoming negative emotions, such as fear and anxiety associated with contested spaces, which lead people to avoid them. Physical immersion in fear‐ or anxiety‐inducing spaces can be seen as a form of exposure that may initially cause distress but also provides opportunities for habituation. Without engaging the body, habituation cannot take place (Sønderland et al., 2023).

One way to develop embodied knowledge of a place is through movement. As Casey (2001) argues, places become ‘thicker’ through doing and making, and ‘thin’ through inaction. Various forms of walking—including guided walking tours, participatory walks and performative walks (see Powell, 2019; Singleton, 2025)—can contribute to knowing a place better (e.g. Ruitenberg, 2012) and foster embodied familiarity and understanding (Bamford, 2024).

Walking in groups is a particularly promising form of mobility, as it can put people at ease (Singleton, 2025) and contribute to shared experience. Research has shown that moving together generates feelings of deindividuation and emotional closeness (Crossey et al., 2021), enabling a form of collective flow that can lead participants into emotionally charged spaces they might otherwise avoid. Walking groups composed of members from multiple, even antagonistic, groups can be conceptualized as micro‐publics in Amin's (2002) sense: spaces where people from different backgrounds interact in new ways and are afforded safe opportunities to challenge stereotypes through dialogue.

Guided walking tours merit particular attention due to their capacity to promote multiperspectivity (Ormond & Vietti, 2022). So‐called alternative tours (cf. Schneider, 2020), often organized by civic and political activist groups (Ormond & Vietti, 2022), provide insight into the lived and emplaced experiences of marginalized groups, such as homeless or queer communities, bringing silenced narratives to the fore (cf. Huss, 2023). The role of the guide, as someone entrusted with leading the way towards new learning, is particularly important. Accordingly, collaborative walking methodologies that allow multiple voices and narratives to be heard are seen as a promising approach when visiting contested spaces. Collaborative tours can ‘impact on different audiences with different connections to trauma’ (Huss, 2023, p. 7). Dual‐narrative tours have been shown to foster more complex understandings of conflict and greater motivation to learn more (Schneider, 2019). In my view, collaborative walking tours can facilitate not only the crossing of physical boundaries, but also the crossing of mental boundaries, precisely through immersive exposure to conflicting narratives.

DISCUSSION

Despite the optimism of geographers that shared spaces in increasingly diverse cities can become spaces of encounter, and therefore incubators of hybrid cultures and of ideas about how to ‘live with difference’ (Valentine, 2008), in reality, encounters in shared spaces are often destined to superficiality (Matejskova & Leitner, 2011), thus not holding much promise for fostering meaningful co‐existence (Valentine, 2008, 2013). While the problem of fleeting encounters could arguably be addressed by focusing on shaping spaces to accommodate deeper encounters (Amin, 2002; Shaker Ardekani, 2022), in the case of contexts which have been scarred by conflict and are characterized by deep divisions, what is at stake is not the quality of encounters necessarily, but the fact that people are often better off avoiding the Other and spaces they link to them altogether. The problem of contact avoidance in contested contexts is one that received attention from spatially oriented social psychological research seeking to unravel the socio‐spatial processes implicated in contact avoidance especially in post‐conflict, de‐segregated contexts (e.g. Bettencourt et al., 2019; Dixon et al., 2022, 2025).

My assertion is that solutions put forward to counter contact avoidance and other segregationist practices, should not solely focus on interventions that tackle how antagonistic groups view one another (person–person relations), prejudice‐reduction interventions being one such example, or interventions targeting person–place relations by altering spaces (e.g. urban‐design interventions). I, instead, propose space‐based interventions as interventions that tap onto both person–person and person–place processes that cause people to ‘hunker down’. This new approach to psychological interventions, acknowledges the importance of considering space in studying intergroup behaviours, but also advocates for the utilization of space to transform them.

In what preceded, I provided examples of space‐based activities which could be conceptualized as space‐based interventions, even though I do acknowledge the fact that some activities were conceived within different theoretical frameworks. The main premise on which they rely is that engaging in spatial experiences that: unravel new information about place, enable spatial encounters with the Other, and facilitate line‐crossing to overcome physical and mental barriers, will impact people's notions of place and of the Other in relation to place and, by extension, the spatial behaviours they give way to. Notwithstanding the above, there are undoubtedly challenges to space‐based interventions that I proceed to discuss next.

Challenges: Identity‐matters and structural constraints

Space‐based interventions have a strong intergroup nature; they are rooted in space, and invoke views and sentiments about place. Consequently, intergroup processes that come into play when social identities, including place identity (see Proshansky, 1983), are made salient, will play out in space‐based interventions too. As proposed by the Social Identity and the Social Categorisation Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979 and Turner, 1985, respectively), once people come to conceptualize themselves in terms of social categories, this will activate cognitions and behaviours to ensure a positive self‐esteem by advancing or preserving a superior, unthreatened and optimally distinct identity. Given that people's self‐concepts are based, at least in part, on place (Hauge, 2007), it follows that these processes are activated in the case of place‐identity salience too. There is indeed literature showing that when place identity gains prominence, people manifest the need to regard their place as both distinct and better off from other places (e.g. Bernardo & Palma‐Oliveira, 2016; Hummon, 1986).

The ramifications that this can have for space‐based interventions are significant and worthy of consideration. People who strongly identify with their place, and especially people who are attached to it in the traditional‐attachment way (e.g. believing that there is no better place than one's own), will likely be particularly sensitive to interventions targeting views of place, such as the ones proposed in this paper, that is interventions inviting them to challenge their existing notions of it. As indicated earlier, traditional attachment to place is associated with essentialist views of it, as well as the belief that an ideal place is a place that does not change, that is immutable (see Lewicka et al., 2023). These views have been found to be associated with a lack of openness for newcomers (Wnuk et al., 2023). Consequently, for individuals who find themselves in need to protect or boost their self‐esteem by idealizing their own place, anything that would suggest a differentiation to the place as they know it would get in the way of these processes and could result in a backlash. Such a backlash could manifest in a greater need to keep their place intact and being even more apprehensive to anything or anyone implies change (including newcomers).

Furthermore, interventions that are perceived to be imposing a common in‐group identity in relation to place (e.g. ‘we are all citizens of this place’), may well cause concerns about what Breakwell (1986) in her identity process theory identifies as place‐referent continuity (see also Lalli, 1992). Place‐referent continuity encapsulates the idea that places act as referents to one's past (self) and that due to that, maintaining a link with (one's) place provides a sense of continuity to one's identity. If, therefore, one's place is presented to be a place that was (or should be) shared with more groups other than one's own, if group continuity in a given place is, in other words, threatened, this may, once again, cause reactions on behalf of those individuals who are highly identifying with their in‐group and for whom place is important for their group's continuity. Threats to place‐referent continuity could result in beliefs and behaviours that would ameliorate this threat, such as a rise of autochthony beliefs (Martinovic & Verkuyten, 2013), the notion that place does not belong to everyone, and that it belongs, instead, to those who were there first, and who therefore have more rights to it. Much like essentialist beliefs about place, autochthony beliefs have been also found to be associated with more negative intergroup attitudes and behaviours, both in the context of migration (e.g. Toruńczyk‐Ruiz & Martinović, 2020), and in situations of long‐term ethnic conflicts characterized by territorial ownership disputes (e.g. Storz et al., 2022).

Lastly, identity salience can, as demonstrated by previous studies, affect spatial behaviour. Reicher et al. (2006), for example, examined how a heightened national category salience (Scottish in this case) influenced participants' mobility decisions regarding whether they would cross national boundaries, or choose to stay inland, for short‐ or long‐term employment. They found that when the national category was made salient, participants were less likely to opt to cross borders for long‐term employment and that this relationship was explained by heightened concerns about fitting in, that is not feeling at home or feeling unable to fit into the way of life in a foreign place. One could imagine similar processes being generated especially for minority/‐ised groups in different localities whose (minority) identity, if and when made salient, could lead them to similar feelings (of not fitting in), coupled with avoidance behaviours and further segregation as a result.

Whereas identity processes could and should be carefully taken into account when designing space‐based interventions so as to buffer them, to the extent possible, from potential backlashes, additional concerns remain as regarding structural constraints that could both compromise the possibility to partake in space‐based activities and jeopardize their transformative potential, when they do occur.

To begin with the question of who takes part in space‐based activities it could be argued that unless formalized through institutions (e.g. become part of school curricular or extracurricular activities), space‐based activities constitute resources which not everyone has an equal chance of accessing or harnessing. This raises issues of asymmetries of status and, even more pertinently, asymmetries of capital, social and cultural alike, which could result in differences in opportunities of gaining access to, or reaping the benefits of, this kind of resources. By social and cultural capital, I refer to Bourdieu's (1986) conceptions whereby social capital is defined as the positive social connections of people and (embodied) cultural capital as knowing how to think, act or interact, in a particular societal context to reach one's goals. Hence, to the extent that some level of capital is required to know that such opportunities exist and to know what to make of them, this will mean that the less privileged segments of the population could be left out, whereas those advantaged individuals who have easy access to resources will have the luxury and the freedom of choice to opt for these experiences. Heeding to these concerns, perhaps the most promising avenue for space‐based interventions is one where synergies are forged with formal structures and institutions of the society (e.g. schools, museums and municipalities) in implementing space‐based activities, so as to widen access options that are otherwise compromised by existing asymmetries.

Even if the problem of access is resolved and if we do accept the potential of interventions of this type to cause change, what is there to ensure that their benefits will actually transfer to everyday relations? It would be easier to think of obstacles of this process instead of enablers when thinking about the world's material realities. For example, consider the lingering presence of dividing lines or walls, segregated living areas, lack of shared spaces or the existence of everyday routines and interactions that sustain power inequalities; how can these be overridden merely due to a single experience? How can people keep crossing lines/boundaries when there is so much at cost in doing so?

Space‐based interventions engender, I argue, two potentialities that distinguish them from existing psychological interventions and pose them in a better position to address structural constraints that could otherwise undermine them. These are that they engage the body and that they are poised to induce ‘ruptures’, which can help break patterns of thought and (embodied) practice that sustain a status quo that solidifies inequalities, as well as familiar routines that propagate parallel living and segregationist practices. I discuss these next and conclude with recommendations about how to assess the influence of space‐based interventions in the real world.

Countering challenges: Engaging the body and inducing ‘ruptures’

The first potential affordance of space‐based interventions is that they are not merely cognitive; they also engage the senses and the body in ways that are pertinent for emplaced behaviours. Embodied engagement with space can enable a deeper knowledge of place (Bamford, 2024) alongside the formation of embodied memories of entering and navigating certain spaces. The engagement of the body, I would argue, is particularly important when experiencing unfamiliar and/or contested spaces. Embodied engagement with this kind of spaces provides individuals the opportunity to tackle, through physical immersion and processes of exposure and habituation (Sønderland et al., 2023), dysfunctional emotions (e.g. fear and anxiety) associated with (contested) spaces and their avoidance. Put simply, sometimes it takes a literal step to cross a line and unless that step is taken, feared spaces will remain anxiety provoking and, as such, spaces to avoid. An embodiment lens also avoids the risk of treating bodies as a‐political instead of political sites where power is negotiated and contested.

Contested spaces aside, people avoid or do not take up opportunities to engage with, the Other also in more mellow and unthreatening everyday settings. Paolini et al. (2026) argue that the intergroup behaviour of individuals in their everyday spaces is a product of habituation. People become habituated to approach or avoid the Other because of individual‐level and contextual‐level factors that either enable or constrain them to behave one way or another. They also propose that to the extent that (emplaced) intergroup behaviour is a product of automatic response to habit cues that prescribe behaviour, then principles of habit discontinuation should also apply. According to the model they propose, the habit–rupture model of intergroup contact in everyday settings, what can disrupt contact habits, much like any habits, are significant changes that would break the habit architecture. Paolini et al. (2026) suggest that the stability of the environment that sustains habits can be challenged through macro‐level events that affect relevant structures that act as habit cues (e.g. imposition or demolition of dividing lines), through life‐changing events such as moving to a new area, and/or through changes in how social spaces/ communities are designed (i.e. in a way that promotes cross‐group interactions or not). These ‘ruptures’, they theorize, will cause within‐person changes which could set the ground for ‘a new trajectory of intergroup interactions, that is susceptible to intervention, persuasion and deliberation’, even though they also acknowledge that if this momentum is not seized then ‘return to homeostatic levels’ is also possible.

Directly related to the above, the second affordance of space‐based interventions is their potential to induce ‘ruptures’ in the way Petty (2016) talks about them, that is as experiences that break routine as they render the Other visible and push people to begin to recognize the emplaced Other and their perspectives. Albeit discomforting, ‘ruptures’, are an important quality of interventions that are truly transformative as opposed to interventions that adopt an appeasing approach to resolving intergroup tensions, that is interventions that focus on promoting ‘tolerance’ of the co‐located Other, or as Brown (2009) puts it ‘an uncomplicated celebration of diversity and difference’ (p. 16). I deem that interventions need to be transformative in the same way that intergroup encounters need to be transformative for one to ‘really see’ the Other.

It would, of course, be naïve to assume that a single ‘moment of rupture’ caused by a space‐based activity can cause sustained change in the behavioural patterns of individuals. If anything, space‐based activities as I conceptualize them in this paper are about providing emplaced experiences that could act as anchors, as embodied memories, that would render taking the next literal or metaphorical step towards the Other possible, especially when this extra step is required. I am referring here to occasions necessitating intergroup alliances, occasions of collective action and other forms of active civic engagement to strive for better collective futures. Space‐based activities cannot cause any permanent change as isolated experiences, certainly not when social inequalities in a given context are rampant, when there is unhealed trauma, grievances that remain unaddressed, and when there are real practical obstacles to doing anything that deviates from business as usual. To the extent that these societal constraints can be challenged by bottom‐up processes, then activities of this kind should be able to fuel them.

MOVING FORWARD

To determine how people respond to space‐based interventions and particularly their potential to engage the body and induce ‘moments of rupture’ will require careful consideration of assessment methods and tools. Albeit outside the scope of this paper, I recommend an assemblage of methods and tools ranging from physiological measurements to self‐report measures, to participatory Geographical Information Systems and walking interviews, as well as art‐based methods drawing on embodiment. I argue that more traditional assessment regimes that follow behaviour‐modification logic may not suffice or even be relevant in this case. In their critique of prejudice‐reduction interventions, Paluck and Green (2009) conclude with the proposition that interventions situated in the real world go beyond an ecologically valid way of testing the effectiveness of an intervention and that the field itself can and should be used as a laboratory for generating richer theory.

Thus, to harness the potentialities of the field, I advocate for a process‐oriented approach to evaluating space‐based interventions. A process‐oriented ontology according to Power et al. (2023) seeks to understand ‘how new phenomena that did not exist a priori come into being’ (p. 380) and favour methodologies that foreground those ‘processes unfolding where new phenomena emerge, [and] which are not fully predictable’ (p. 384). Mobile methodologies (e.g. walking interviews), are deemed appropriate in this regard since they lend themselves to the exploration of the link between self and place (Evans & Jones, 2011) and allow a range of new issues as well as subjective experiences of place to emerge (Di Masso et al., 2025; Jones et al., 2008). Favouring a process‐oriented ontology is fully aligned with the core aim of space‐based interventions, that being the advancement of an understanding of places as a process as opposed to a thing (Varzi, 2021), whereby people, citizens, are viewed as contributors to this process of creating new knowledge, new understandings of place, and not as mere recipients or, worse, as individuals with deficiencies in need of ‘cure’.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Maria Ioannou: Conceptualization; visualization; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The author confirms that there is no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

No empirical data were generated as this is a theoretical paper.