Here are my final two papers concluding my research on parks.
Big City Sustainability Tour: New York City Paris Yates
During the past winter and spring quarter, I have been researching the question, “Do urban municipal parks in big cities in America facilitate sustainable connectedness in terms of ecological democracy?” As part of my research, I toured four parks in New York City to observe and gather data on how parks in this city facilitate connectedness in terms of ecological democracy. Connectedness is one of the fifteen principles of Ecological Democracy, a social movement written about by Randolph Hester in his book Design for Ecological Democracy. In the book, Hester gives his definition of ecological democracy: “Ecological democracy, then, is government by the people emphasizing direct, hands-on involvement. Actions are guided by understanding natural processes and social relationships within our locality and the larger environmental context. This causes us to creatively reassess individual needs, happiness, and long-term community goods in the places we inhibit.”(4)
Connectedness is the second principle in Randolph Hester’s fifteen principles of ecological democracy. In Design for Ecological Democracy, Hester explains what connectedness means to design “Connectedness in city designs counters disjointed and piecemeal environmental decision making. It is fundamental to the survival of the ecosystems. Heightened public understanding of how interrelated we are with the entirety of our urban ecosystems underlies comprehensive democratic decision making about nearby and faraway landscapes.”(50) I have taken Hester’s ecologically democratic design principles and applied them to anthropologic theory and ethnographic methods. I believe that true democracy hears and considers the voices of all who live and abide in the democracy. I also believe in order to achieve true ecological democracy, we have to hear and consider the voices of all in the ecosystem. The consideration of all who live and abide in the urban environment is what I have focused my park research around.
The four parks I visited were, Chelsea Park on the lower west side, Columbus Park on the lower east side, Battery Park on the lower tip of Manhattan, and Central Park on the upper end of Manhattan. I chose these parks because of their locations in the city and their populations and cultural make up. New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and these parks are located in some of the most economic and culturally diverse neighborhoods in the city. The parks are relatively old, and due to the space constrictions in the city, they are designed in very traditional city park ways. The parks are square plots of land with athletic courts, playground equipment, and open spaces with lots of bench seating. The designs of the parks are classic examples of urban parks in dense cities that facilitate many forms of connectedness.
New York City is visited by millions of tourist every year and Battery Park facilitates many connections between them and the city. It is located on the water front and is the place where you catch the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. It also is the temporary home of the globe that stood in the WTC complex. The park is surrounded by residential high-rise apartments and skyscrapers in the financial district. It connects tourists to the past, present, and future history of New York and reminds people of the principles the city is built on. Chelsea Park is primarily designed for children and is a playground for the students who attend the elementary school next door. The park has two big soccer fields, playground equipment, basketball courts, and a community health clinic. This park connects children to the environment and gives them a place in the crowded adult city that is their own.
Central Park is the mother of all urban parks. It was designed, built, and is maintained for the residents of Manhattan to make connections with each other and the city. The park is filled with rolling hills, sprawling lawns, and a lake that reflects the high-rise buildings that surround it. There are also athletic courts, an ice skating rink, and a children’s zoo. Central Park facilitates many connections between residents, tourists, business, wildlife and the environment. However, I don’t feel the connections promote ecological democracy or democracy in general. The park is located between two of the world’s wealthiest neighborhoods and its design and activities reflect that. From carriage rides to boating on the lake, the park has a uptown feel and the people who visit have a decidedly upscale look. Most of the visible diversity is in the animal wildlife that feasts on the garbage. Central Park is beautifully undemocratic.
In Design for Ecological Democracy, Hester talks about the need to put things we normally associate as opposites together. Here he gives reasons why there are social strifes in cities, and ways connectedness counter that: “Even as we become fragmented as a citizenry, our loyalties have been simultaneously stretched by the globalized economy. These forces create debilitating local social rifts that can be addressed through ecological thinking. Two actions are especially important in city design- creating settings of social mutualism and giving form to glocalization. Social mutualism is an association between groups that typically are in opposition- by age, race, religion, social class, and interest group… Glocalization is the design process whereby mutualism is extended from locality to locality across continents.’ The one park I visited that was a good example of social mutualism between people in New York City is Columbus Park
The one park on my visit to New York that had true ecologically democratic features was Columbus Park. The Park truly reflects the people and cultures that live and work in its neighborhood. The park is located between Chinatown and Little Italy on the lower east side. It also is across the street from the Manhattan criminal courthouse, so the park is filled with a mix of Chinese, Italian, Latin, and Black American people. The air was filled with the sounds of many languages and smells of food from around the world. The courtyard at the entrance of the park was filled with Chinese people playing cards, singing songs, and socializing with each other. The middle of the park had children of all races and creeds crawling over playground equipment, and right next to that is a rest area designed for street people called a “comfort station”. The fact that there was a place designated for street people, and it was right next to where children play, was democracy in action. Guys in suits who work in the courthouse play basketball with guys from the neighborhood on the courts in the back of the park. The games are competitive and you can hear them talking trash in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Even the wildlife in the park and the neighborhood pets roamed about and were fed and tolerated respectively. The park is crowded, noisy, and packed with people from all over and from every walk of life, yet no one person or group overpowers or dominates the park. Every color, age, gender, and economic background in that neighborhood was not only represented, but had what seemed to be an equal place and voice in the park.
I did not talk to anyone who worked for this park. However, I did talk to the citizens in the park and got a feeling the park facilitated the glocalization Hester talks about in his book. Hester explains what glocalization can foster: “ Glocalization can create positive social connections if the effects of global standardization, dominance, exploitation- social relations with harmful effects can be neutralized… Cross-cultural association among grass roots groups with mutual respect, comparable benefits, and a commitment to strengthen idiosyncrasies of local culture can create exceptional enabling form.” I did not talk to any employee who worked at Columbus park, but from the informal conversations I had with people in the park, and what I observed on my visits, I believe the park facilitates the glocalization Hester refers to.
The parks I visited in New York City facilitate connectedness between the community, the city, and the natural environment. Columbus Park not only facilitates connectedness, but seems to facilitate true ecological democracy. Not just because everyone was represented and had a voice, but because they communicated with each other. Some parks are crowded with a diversity of people who never say a word to each other. Central park is filled with people who only seem to speak to people they come to the park with and ignore everyone else. It is a defense mechanism urbanites use frequently. I didn’t observe that at Columbus Park. People acknowledged you with a nod or a wave, nothing fancy but an acknowledgment none the less. In order for us to achieve true ecological democracy, we have to start acknowledging each other and respecting each other’s rights and voices. The parks in New York City deepened my understanding of that and allowed me to observe one of the best examples of ecologically democratic connectedness I have seen in an urban park.
Hester, Randolph. Design for Ecological Democracy, The MIT Press. (2006)
Big City Sustainability Tour: Seattle Paris Yates
During the winter and spring quarter of this year I have been researching the question, “Do urban municipal parks in big cities in America facilitate sustainable connectedness in terms of ecological democracy?” As part of my research, I toured four parks in Seattle to observe and gather data on how parks in this city facilitate connectedness in terms of ecological democracy. Connectedness is one of the fifteen principles of Ecological Democracy, a social movement written about by Randolph Hester in his book Design for Ecological Democracy: In the book, Hester gives his definition of ecological democracy, “Ecological Democracy, then, is government by the people emphasizing direct, hands-on involvement. Actions are guieded by understanding natural processes and social relationships within our locality and larger environmental context. This causes us to creatively reassess individual needs, happiness, and long-term community goods in the places we inhabit.”(4)
Connectedness is the second principle in Randolph Hester’s fifteen principles of ecological democracy. In Design for Ecological Democracy Hester explains what connectedness means to design: “Connectedness in city designs counters disjointed and piecemeal environmental decision making. It is fundamental to the survival of the ecosystems. Heightened public understanding of how interrelated we are with the entirety of our urban ecosystems underlies comprehensive democratic decision making about nearby and faraway landscapes.”(50) I have taken Hester’s ecologically democratic design principles and applied them to anthropologic theory and ethnographic methods. I believe that true democracy hears and considers the voices of all who live and abide in the democracy. I also believe in order to achieve true ecological democracy, we have to hear and consider the voices of all in the ecosystem. The considering of all who live and abide in the urban environment is what I have focused my park research around.
The four parks I visited in Seattle were, Jose Rizal Park on Beacon Hill, Seward Park on Lake Washington, Freeway Park in Downtown, and Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. I chose these parks because of their locations, individual sizes, and the population and cultural backgrounds of their neighborhoods. Before I visited the parks, I created a data sheet of criteria I would look for in each park based on the connectedness principle of ecological democracy. I used that data sheet to record what I observed in each park. I also took pictures of structures and activities in each park to record my findings. The criteria on the data sheet consisted of these questions: who does this park connect, who is this park designed for, who is represented, how is the park designed, what activities do the park facilitate, what type of transportation can be used to get to park, what facilities are for pets, what type of wildlife is in the park, and what outside of the box features are in the park. At the end of the data sheet I recorded my observations of what I thought were the overall connectedness features of the park I visited. After visiting each park, and looking over my written and photographed information, I have drawn some conclusions about how parks in Seattle facilitate sustainable connectedness and true ecological democracy.
The parks make connections in these four general ways: community and environment, community and municipality, community and wildlife, community and business. The connection between community and environment seems obvious when you look at the way the parks are designed. They are filled with trees, shrubs and lawns in open spaces that contrast the cramped steel and concrete spaces in the city. They also have some of the best views of the urban skyline. Jose Rizal and Volunteer Park in particular give the visitor sweeping views of downtown. The parks are designed as natural oases in urban deserts, and connect people to the city’s municipality through education programs, community work projects, and arts and cultural programs. They also give the public information about sustainable municipal projects, such as the CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) Reduction Project in Seward Park planned for 2015, using a kiosk posted in the park designed to get residents involved in the planning process. All of the parks connect people to urban wildlife simply because they generate so much trash. Many of the visitors use the parks to picnic, eat lunch and relax in during the day. These people usually work in or around the neighborhoods the parks are located in and the parks facilitate a strong connection between business and the community. Restaurants and vendors are located near the parks and the consumption of food is a major activity. This creates plenty of food for urban wildlife to live on and plenty of opportunity for wildlife and humans to interact.
In Design for Ecological Democracy, Hester explains the negative effects of streets and highways on urban cities, “They generally discourage pedestrian movement, disrupt water and wildlife patterns, and divide neighborhoods into fragments. Isolated from previously adjacent areas, neighborhood fragments suffer island effects, disproportionate pollution, and loss of services. Over time disinvestment creates concentrated pockets of poverty.”(52) Freeway park was created, and in my opinion facilitates connectedness that counters the division Hester talks about. The park is a container garden set on top of I-5 in the middle of downtown Seattle. It was opened in 1976 in honor of the bicentennial and was the first park of its kind. It is designed to be a bridge and safe access between the downtown business district and capitol and First Hill neighborhoods. The park connects many ages, races, and classes of people. Capitol and First hill are culturally and economically diverse and the park reflects that. It’s also is a place for people who work in the skyscrapers next to the park relax and connect with a more natural environment. This park is a good example of how out of the box design can facilitate connectedness on many social and environmental levels.
Although I found plenty of evidence of connectedness in the parks I visited, I still do not believe the parks ultimately facilitate true ecological democracy. They are designed and equipped to represent most people and animals except for the homeless/street people that frequent, and often live in them. During every visit to each park that I toured, I witnessed many men and woman who have substance abuse or mental health issues. I talked to Kristen Spexarth, who is an employee of the Seattle Parks department, and has worked at freeway and Volunteer Park. When I asked her about the interaction between the homeless/street people and the other visitors to the park she said this “there is no interaction, they (visitors of the park) just walk right past them (homeless/street people) and act like they’re not even there, like they don’t exist”. I asked her if the parks department had any official programs or entities that deal with the homeless and she said “Nothing sponsored by the parks (department) itself, we just refer the people to the regular services the city has to offer. I made a list of resources and posted it on the door outside my office”. To her knowledge, the parks department doesn’t have any plans to create a program or entity that deals specifically with these park visitors.
I conclude by saying parks in Seattle facilitate many connections between the community and the urban environment. However, I don’t think these connections facilitate true ecological democracy. As long as we ignore the needs of the homeless/street people who use and often live in these parks, there is no way we can achieve the true representation needed to attain ecological democracy.
Hester, Randolph. Design for Ecological Democracy, The MIT Press (2006)
