The Paradox of Parks

This article focuses on the Fort Circle Parks of Washington, DC, and also provides examples from other cities to explore the histories, problems, and possibilities of urban parks. As public space, parks are crucial to community and identity. They provide important natural habitats and healthful environments, but they can also become toxic sites. Planners have tried to organize how they are used through how they are designed; then other people have used them in different, contested ways. Parks are sites of deeply rooted folk traditions, shifting ideologies, and corporate power. They attract loyal champions and volunteers, and engage fervent place-based activism. Parks express and exacerbate shifting inequalities in cities. In parks, people with power may slight and denigrate the poor, the problematic, and the aimless, and sometimes blame them for the parks’ problems. But diverse people also come together there in startling, serendipitous ways. Parks tell stories about power, and about democracy.

Key Words:

• parks
• urban history
• Washington
• DC
• environmental justice
• race

Notes

1. I collaborated with anthropologists Tanya Ramos, Sherri Lawson Clark, Melinda Crowley, Lisa Kinney, and Patrick Pierce and community ethnographers Jackie Brown, Penn Clark, Benjamin Daugherty, Susie McFadden-Resper, Kenny Pitt, and Terik Washington to do the framework and fieldwork in the Fort Circle parks that informs this study. We interviewed park staff, users, and neighbors; visited parks; mapped parks; documented signs of use; held focus groups; went to their meetings; and reviewed archival materials and use permits. I also appreciate the comments and advice of Yvonne Jones, John Hale, Micaela di Leonardo, Elizabeth Sheehan, Joe Dent, Rhoda Kaananeh, Joan Gero, Michael Twitty, Marianna Blagburn, Sue Barnes, Roger Legerwood, Billy Cobb, Ric Zeller, Stephen Syphax, and Jon Adelson.

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