Conversations revealed the concerns that people have when place and people become less “knowable” to those who have lived there for generations. Community sentiment may become more fragile and more fragmentary, and this may impact upon the coherence of a sense of place: We’ve a lot of people from Dublin moving down to Stradbally now…nearly all the new houses in the estates, a lot of people are from Dublin. You wouldn’t know half the people in Stradbally anymore. It has changed quite a bit, because we’re from here we know everyone who has always been here. In the last 10 years in particular, a lot of people have moved in from Dublin, and outside areas… They don’t associate…I can now walk down the street and not meet anyone I know. It has lost a bit of its charm as regards the family feeling that would have been around-everybody knew their neighbour, your neighbour would be there in a crisis You go to your family now in a [crisis] situation as opposed to your neighbour whom you would have relied upon in the past. The community feeling is kind of going out of it. People worry about the encroachment of ‘urban problems’, problems normally associated with big cities: There’s a lot of people, drugs…they’re dropped off at the courthouse every Friday night. See with the drugs it bringing in bad crowds, you know what I mean? They’re coming from different areas. Stradbally has changed. There’s plenty of crime and a bit of drugs. There is a lot of passing crime. People coming in are making [the town] worse. Because you don’t know who they are or what they are…. In terms of their value system, people in Stradbally are not all that different to people in new suburban communities in the hinterland of Dublin city, (Corcoran, Gray and Peillon 2010). Like their suburban counterparts, participants like a place that has a village (or Main Street) at its heart, a “country feel”, a sense of connectedness to the past, and is resonant with collective memories. People aspire to raise children (and grandchildren) within the contours of that ‘country feel’ which underpins their notions of what a safe, community- oriented, secure environment should be. These beliefs, values and attitudes are largely expressed through a strong sense of place attachment and associational life. As noted, concerns are expressed when the conditions of existence appear to be changing or fall short of this ideal-type. A project like Townscape conducted at the level of everyday life in a particular locality helps to illuminate the way in which individual and social identities can become embedded in and communicated through the local environment, reinforcing the sentimental bonds for people and places, (Hummon, 1992). It also demonstrates how place attachment is imbued with a shared sense of history and collective memory that spills over into a vibrant associational life and good neighbourliness. In this era of globalisation, it has often been asserted that we need a notion of ‘place’ as stable, secure and unique. According to Relph, if places are ‘sources of security and identity for individuals and for groups of people, then it is important that the means of experiencing, creating and maintaining significant places are not lost,’ (1976: 6). In Stradbally, participants’ sense of attachment to place is deeply connected to the local community of which they form a part. There is evidence here of a towns folk who embrace their public, civic and social selves as they go about living, working and raising families in the locality. Civicism is not imposed, but fashioned from below and nurtured by active citizens. It is given powerful voice through pride in place, strong associational life, and relatively high levels of mutuality and trust. 59