social contract subversion lawlessness control exclusion
resistance | public spaces by dustin valen
R ecently , after recommending a walk in Toronto’s High Park to a visiting friend, I was duly informed that large caches of condom wrappers were concealed in the trees and shrubs not far from the park’s well-worn paths. What are we to make of this seemingly non-event? Should we be alarmed or indifferent? How about optimistic? In The Experience of Landscape , geographer Jay Appleton argues that our attraction to landscape is the result of deep-seated psychological and biological urges. 1 In his prospect-refuge theory, the pleasure we take in viewing and entering landscapes (both real and pictorial) comes from our latent animal urge to ‘see without being seen’. We covet both expansive prospects and the intimacy of shady groves, because they elicit feelings of safety. As a way of thinking through contemporary public parks, Appleton’s theory raises several questions. First, besides offering individual enlightenment, parks embody many collective desires, from beauty, harmony and order, to morality and health. Can the prospect-refuge theory include these contemporary values? Second, whereas Appleton’s approach is fundamentally aesthetic, the values placed on contemporary landscapes cover social, political and ecological concerns. Parks are a steadfast institution of the modern city that embody some our most cherished civic values. But they are also riddled with paradoxes: truths and rumours about public parks abound, they harbour an illicit sex-trade, attract petty and violent crime, and are often sites of disorder and unrest. Here the double-edged consequences of a psychological approach are equally clear; where better than in the safety of a refuge
to act out these socially-transgressive behaviours? And where better to transgress than in these value-laden landscapes? Parks attract the same subversive pleasures and civil disobedience that they are meant to literally and symbolically expunge. If parks reflect our Edenesque desires, discovering bad behaviour in parks is like looking into the mirror and seeing a blemish on the face of reality. Not only is bad behaviour in parks inevitable (according to Appleton and the historical record), it shakes us to our psychological core. As landscape studies shift from questions of aesthetics to issues of power, identity, gender and race, the merits of bad behaviour become apparent. In the interplay between individuals who transgress park rules and the social and political consequences, bad behaviour brings our landscape values into sharp and often discomfiting relief. In the past it has also led to social and political change.
10
Dustin Valen
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator