By Keiko Honda It is not a coincidence that during the lockdown in the face of the pandemic, most of us looked for new ways to maximize the functionality of our home space, then found ourselves feeling more independent, competent, and comforted, despite the challenge. As many activities are happening in our homes and proximity, we have invested our practices and developed an emotional sense of deep connection with particular places – a sense of “rootedness”.  Place becomes an extension of the self.  That’s called place attachment, the concept which scholars in environmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, and human geography consider an essential element in understanding identity, human well-being and sociality, memory formation, community participation, and environmental responsibility and advocacy for the environment.   “Place makes memories cohere in complex ways. People’s experiences of the urban landscape intertwine the sense of place and the politics of space,” says architectural historian Dolores Hayden. Similarly, psychologists postulate that we lock ideas and objects by linking them to a place: integrating many stimuli together helps us remember something particularly important, called episodic memories. This pandemic has disrupted our physical connections to many familiar social places like offices, cafes, schools, gyms, restaurants, community centres, movie theaters and many more, keeping almost everyone, especially seniors and those who are at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19, at home for seemingly endless time (until the pandemic will come to an end).  How does supposedly immobilized life imposed by the pandemic affect the way we store memories and the way we create meaning in our lives? What do large groups of people remember – and forget? It is an intriguing question for future historians. Social memory is at stake and thus deeply pertinent here. As reminded by WHO’s Healthy Ageing, being...