House and Home and their Interaction with Changes in New Zealand's Urban System, Households and Family Structures

Abstract

The place where we live is one of the key locales which shapes our sense of place and enables us to develop our sense of who we are. The paper explores the linkages between the literature on ?the home? and the meaning of place. We argue that ?homes? are special kinds of places and are socially constructed in a continual and changing process. Houses as material objects and homes as symbolic entities are shaped and reshaped by owners and tenants over time in response to both changes in the individual's life course and the social context within which they are set. We therefore interpret the meaning of home against the changing backdrop of New Zealand's urban system and the two decades of economic and social change from 1980 to the late 1990s.