Tag Archives: space for place

Faces of Flight – Space for Place

Conservation, Faces of Flight, Heritage, Recreation
High Island, Texas

The weather heads salivated for days. Nothing provokes a Pavlovian response in weather geeks more than another storm of the century (How many are we allowed in one century?). I knew Pittsburgh to be in the path, but we glided into town with little trouble. Deplaning I watched the frontal system sweep the runway, and by the time we entered the terminal spitting rain and raging winds shook the building. Scheduled to speak in West Virginia the following day, I sprinted to my rental car and headed west toward the interstate. I made the mistake of following the directions dictated by my iPhone, and soon I left the interstate far behind and slid toward Appalachia on a narrow, serpentine two-laner.

While certainly no hurricane (I love how the weather heads trot out that analogy.), I decided that the rain, wind, darkness, a narrow road, and 60-year-old eyes did not blend well. I bailed early. Reaching I-76 (my route south), I navigated toward Cambridge, Ohio. I am not sure if I had previously heard of Cambridge, but I am certain that I never visited (To be honest, I still don’t know why I ended up in Ohio.). Situated at the intersection of two interstates, I suspected that I could find a hotel and restaurant along the highway. I exited the freeway at Cambridge and entered the American Everywhere.

James Kunstler characterized America as “ever-busy, ever-building, ever-in-motion, ever-throwing-out the old for the new; we have hardly paused to think about what we are so busy building, and what we have thrown away. Meanwhile, the everyday landscape becomes more nightmarish and unmanageable every year. For many, the word development itself has become a dirty word.” Cambridge, I found, is this everyday landscape. The town offered its handshake with Ruby Tuesday, Hampton Inn, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut. All were the same as at home; all were the same as found throughout interstate America. To Kunstler this is nowhere; to me it’s everywhere.

America is new, rootless. Americans share an impoverished sense of place. We have no Mecca, no Angkor Wat, and no Taj Mahal. American natives have special places, but we immigrants see little value in them. Consider the conflict over Bear Butte, South Dakota. To the Lakota this is sacred ground. To Sturgis this is a potential campground and parking spot for Harley riders.

Early conservationists believed that America’s specialness could be found in her landscapes. Theodore Roosevelt said that “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”. For Roosevelt, what America lacked in ancient monuments and edifices it more than gained with her transcendent lands and wildlife.

Americans, however, are now becoming detached from this heritage, with these special places. Roosevelt warned that “the lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books.” How many Americans take joy in either? In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002. The Outdoor Foundation reports that over half of Americans “take no joy in outdoor nature,” with alarming numbers of children divorced from the outdoors.

Now, slipping into Cambridge, I confront the America devised by its marketeers. I see the America invented by global hucksters, their goods relentlessly hawked on the ubiquitous television. The McDonalds on the screen is the McDonalds in Cambridge. The Wal-Mart on television is the Wal-Mart in Cambridge. The streets signs, billboards, traffic lights, and facades are no more real in Cambridge than on the tube. This version of America, known by all, is fakery unleashed and unlimited. I can’t decide if I am in the Matrix or the Truman Show.

As a child I would visit my grandparents in Paris (Texas) several times a year. In that pre-interstate age (President Eisenhower, who initiated the interstate system, did not begin his presidency until 1953.), the roads invariably wended from downtown to downtown. My sister and I knew every hamburger joint and rest stop between Bryan and Paris. Even today I remember the sweet-and-sour lusciousness of the limeade in Sulphur Springs. Each town along our route had an identity, a character.

Now, your McDonalds is my McDonalds, your Wal-Mart is my Wal-Mart. Why leave home if all that is offered away is the same as in your neighborhood? Forget the family that once owned and worked in that Sulphur Springs hamburger and limeade joint, or the snow cone cart by the railroad track that my grandfather would take us by after work. What is more important to Everywhere America is that (1) everywhere is the same, and (2) everywhere is cheap.

One hotel is easily replaced by another (Hampton by Holiday Inn Express). One restaurant is easily substituted for another (Ruby Tuesday by Chiles). But what about that for which there are no substitutes? Would you replace Gettysburg with any Civil War site? What about substituting a pileated for the ivory-billed woodpecker, or a mourning dove for the passenger pigeon, or a penguin for the great auk? In a world of cheap throwaways and easy replacements, that which cannot be replaced is at risk.

Returning to my factory hotel I jotted a note on Facebook about Cambridge, a brief snippet asking “where the hell am I?” The responses came immediately. One friend wrote “heard of it. Dangerously close to my old stomping grounds and soon to be new stomping grounds. And yes, there’s really not much there!!” My heart sank (not really; I stopped for a meal and a bed). Then another friend sent the following: “You are near an excellent birding location! It’s called “the Wilds.” It’s a reclaimed strip mining area… The facility also has yurts for overnight guests. Very cool place and staff.” Soon another posted that “that area is full of special places…the Wilds being number one.” Humm, there seems to be a there there.

But how would you know if you bumped into Cambridge from the interstate? Like America, Cambridge is hidden by a shiny plastic wrapper. Only when you peel the layers back do you find the meat on the bones, the Hocking Hills, the Salt Fork State Park, and the Wilds. The American marketing machine sells gloss and I am interested in gristle.

How can we save that which does not exist for most Americans? Federal programs such as the National Heritage Areas and America’s Byways are selective and only touch on a few of these special places. Getting people into the outdoors is only a small part of the challenge. First, they need to know where to find the outdoors. Second, once there they need help in connecting to the land, its recreations, and its stories. Modern television marketing is delivered turn-key, without any requirement that you think. In the outdoors, the experiences are earned rather than gratis.

Finally, our special places need space. The American soul (as tangibly embodied in these places) is being squeezed from all sides, with what makes the American experience special being pushed aside for a marketeer’s version of the American story. American places need space in the American mind and in the American landscape. These are the American touchstones, special places with names and physical locations where we return to remind us of who we are, what we have accomplished, and how to navigate forward based on our past experiences.

Blackburnian Warbler

Isn’t this a critical aspect and appeal of birding? Each spring I return to the Texas coast to see the same birds that pass through the same special places such as High Island. With each day new migrants appear, northern parula followed by rose-breasted grosbeak followed by blackburnian warbler followed by yellow-billed cuckoo followed by least flycatcher. What could be more reassuring than the annual reappearance of birds that we exert absolutely no control over? As long as we protect their places, their cycle will continue. As long as we protect their places, our children and grandchildren will find the same inspiration and joy in this spring ritual that I have for the past four decades.

In the early 1990s I begin developing the first birding trail with Texas Parks and Wildlife. I remember being criticized by a group from Colorado that assured me that “real” birders did not need my birding trails. Perhaps “real” birders can find these special places, but the vast majority of the rest of us can’t. With initiatives such as birding trails, IBAs, and eBird places we are bringing America’s special birding places to the attention of the public and the officials guided by their sentiments. Birding trails are a celebration of birding places, those parks, refuges, and sanctuaries where we return to reassure ourselves that the world is still spinning and that the birds are still migrating.

America is adrift, stumbling forward with a road map drawn by shock-jocks and gas bags. When lost we tune in our favorite bloviator and ask for directions. Yet there is a real behind the unreal, a wonderful store filled with goodies behind the facade. If you want to know the American story, you must experience the American places. If these places are to continue to comfort, inform, enlighten, entertain, inspire, enliven, guide, and reassure us, then they must be given ample space in the American psyche. America, now more than ever, needs space for place.

Ted Lee Eubanks
4 Nov 2010

The Culture of Conservation – Space For Place (2)

Conservation, Culture of Conservation, Recreation, ,

Part 1 of Space For Place ended with we need the tools to stitch these places into seamless spaces, and the media necessary to present these spaces to America. First, let’s stitch. Places often exist independently, islands within an ocean of other places. An Audubon place, such as Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, shares little with the other Audubon places such as the Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary, Mill Grove, or Rowe Sanctuary other than the name. The name certainly has space, but the places themselves are effectively isolated.

There is much to be gained from knitting discrete, disparate places into a seamless fabric. To hack a cliche from Aristotle, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. For example, the National Park Service (NPS) manages around 400 “units.” Certainly the NPS as an entity occupies significant American space, particularly in those places that it manages that are so much a part of the American identity. Yet most Americans, I suspect, could not tell you the difference between a national forest, a national wildlife refuge, a ACOE recreation area, or lands owned by the BLM or the Bureau of Reclamation. All of these are public land stewards, and the land is managed for the American people. Yet these forests and refuges occupy a much smaller space in the American psyche than the national parks.

Technology, however, can begin to help us stitch places into spaces. One method that I use is to organize “trails” out of like places. By “trail” I do not mean only paths through forests, such as the Allegheny Trail. In my work a trail is a way of connecting important places so that they portray an overarching space.

Let me offer an example. Here is the Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail that we are developing in Indiana. Click on “Map” and you will see the 54 places that have been interlaced to create a space called the Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail. My company, Fermata, has now developed signage, guides, a blog, a website, and a SmartTrail (more on that later) to help solidify the space. Of course each place is capable of standing on its own. But how much more powerful is the cementing of these places into a single, consolidating space?

Here is another example from our work – the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway in Kansas. In the byway we have again linked numerous places into a single space. These places include Quivira NWR, Cheyenne Bottoms, several communities, and a number of additional parks and historical sites. To solidify the space we developed a website, audio guide, interpretive signs, wayfinding signs, a printed guide, a printed rack piece, and an interpretive plan that provide a roadmap for the entire consolidation. Quivira NWR is a place (which actually can be subdivided into additional places), while the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway is a space. The Smithsonian is a space, and the individual buildings and facilities are places.

These projects, though, are long, drawn-out affairs. In both cases we and the clients invested years. We need a simpler, more expedient way of making spaces.

Enter technology. Only in the past year or so has geolocation become a tool for the masses. I know; GPS units have been around for some time. But the Iphone 3G and the Android are relatively new, and smartphone geolocation is the way to the masses. According to Pew,

Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones, yet only 24% of adults use those apps. Many adults who have apps on their phones, particularly older adults, do not use them, and 11% of cell owners are not sure if their phone is equipped with apps. Among cell phone owners, 29% have downloaded apps to their phone and 13% have paid to download apps.

Yes, we are early in the evolution and adoption of the smartphone technologies. But consider this. According to Dr. Allan Kanner from Berkeley,

Recent studies have also shown that by the time they are 36 months old, American children recognize an average of 100 brand logos.

How many birds can children name that are seen in their yards? How many parks other than playgrounds have children visited by the time that they are in kindergarten? How can we effectively lead people from a psychological space to a physical place? When compared to American marketing, we do not exist. We need every tool that we can find, and to be content with marginal gains. We are starting at zero.

For the past couple of years I have been watching an Austin company as they have been developing IPhone and Android technologies for tours and trails. They are typical Austin computer geeks, and not in the business of nature or historical interpretation. But they have developed a fantastically simple and effective application, and I recently entered into an agreement with them to begin offering it through Great American Trails. Given the number of places we have inventoried in the U.S. (thousands), we have a backlog that can be brought to the public rather quickly. But I am also convinced that we need to be able to attract others to organize their places into spaces as well. In other words, I want to be able to offer an application that people can use to make spaces from places. We are still in the early stages of this project, but I am excited about the potential.

But how to we educate, promote, and deliver these new spaces to the people? We should (in fact, must) begin with the web. Web 2.0, and in particular the newest blog platforms such as WordPress 3.0, are the web-based technologies that will allow us to engage the public in a dynamic, vital way. The third step in my culture of conservation strategy is to keep the messages simple, and this is precisely what I envision in this web offering. I have secured space4place.org as well as spaceforplace.org, and I suspect that you will be seeing something about this shortly as well.

Finally, I have been working with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council in Pittsburgh, and we will roll out these two programs first there. I am speaking at the Western Pennsylvania Trail Symposium October 26 near Pittsburgh on SmartTrails. I will actually conduct a workshop where we will develop a SmartTrail on the fly. This, to me, is a key component in any space for place strategy. We must be able to organize and connect places in real time. The forces that work against place are not constrained by time or money, and we have no choice but to have ways of responding in kind.

My next installment will be a discussion of keeping messages simple. Why? Think about this – the average American reading level is between the 8th and 9th grade.

Here is a paragraph from the National Audubon Society website about global warming:

All organisms depend on their habitats for food, water, shelter, and opportunities to breed and raise young. Climate changes can affect organisms and their habitats in a myriad of ways. In fact, global warming impacts all life on earth, from individual organisms to populations, species, communities, and ecosystems. It can alter behaviors, population sizes, species distributions, plant and animal communities, and ecosystem functions and stability. How strongly different species will be affected varies, depending on differences in their ecology and life history. Species with small population sizes, restricted ranges, and limited ability to move to different habitat will be most at risk. Similarly, different habitats and ecosystems will be impacted differently, with those in coastal, high-latitude, and high-altitude regions most vulnerable.

Now here is a headline from the blog I Hate The Media:

Global warming causes more snow. Except when it causes less snow. And that’s a scientific fact.

Here is your homework. Which of these would connect better with average Americans like your grandmother or your neighbor? More importantly, if I asked people at a local mall about these two statements which do you think they would grasp more quickly?

There will be a test.

Ted Eubanks
14 Sep 2010

The Culture of Conservation – Space for Place

Conservation, Culture of Conservation, Opinion, Politics, Recreation, , , , , , , , ,

A place for everything, everything in its place.

Benjamin Franklin

Wissahickon Creek, Philadelphia

Everything in its place. In Franklin’s case, the place is Philadelphia. For the past year I have been helping Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the nation’s first. More than 300 years ago, William Penn designed Philadelphia to be a “Greene Country Towne,” where squares, parks, and open spaces would allow residents to escape the pace and unhealthy conditions found in 17th-century European cities. In 1690 Governor Penn required for every five acres cleared one acre of forest should be preserved. Franklin led a commission to regulate waste water in the city (leading to the first waste water treatment in the country). Where I am working, Fairmount Park encompasses 9,200 acres, a full 10 percent of the land in Philadelphia (city and county).

Recently I have been rereading Jane Jacobs, and mulling over how our concepts about cities might also apply to conserved lands. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities she commented on how many of the City Beautiful centers failed, attracting not successful small business and shops but “tattoo parlors and second-hand-clothing stores, or else just nondescript, dispirited decay.” Jane died too soon. Perhaps it took cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh longer than she expected to revise their approaches to their once-celebrated centers. Philadelphia’s city center now ranks among the tops in the nation in downtown residents. Pittsburgh has been ranked by Forbes as America’s most livable city.

My work is with parks and open spaces, not with buildings and the urban core. Yet in recent years I have been increasingly interested in how these once flourishing cities, places where city leaders once invested in parks, museums, and grand esplanades, are now using these same inherited assets to reinvent themselves. These cultural, historical, and natural amenities anchor cities, and offer a stable platform for reconstructing and reinvigorating the society that surrounds them. Yet there is an undeniable rule of law that governs these places. To have treasured places, you must protect treasured spaces.

How do the two differ? Place, for my purposes, is a physical location with defined metes and bounds. For example, the national park lands that include the Grand Canyon can be shown on a map with clear, defined boundaries. Most conservation organizations and land conservancies are focused on place.

Grand Canyon - The Place

Space, however, is psychological rather than physical. The federal lands that comprise Grand Canyon National Park do not limit the psychological space occupied by the Grand Canyon. That space includes Flagstaff, Sedona, the Havasupai Indian Reservation, the bordering national forest land, the smell of pinyon burning, the sounds of elk bugling, the crashing of the Colorado River as it slices through the canyon, and the colors of a sunset painted on the canyon walls. The Grand Canyon space is filled individually, with each person defining “Grand Canyon” based on their personal experiences and exposure. Space is the sum of all that is known and felt about a given place or group of places. Space is identity rather than body. While place has discrete, physical boundaries, space has soft, amorphous edges. Space is of the mind; place is of the land.

Grand Canyon Space Example

This chart shows a rudimentary space model for the Grand Canyon. The number of places I am showing is arbitrary; certainly, Grand Canyon is a far more complex landscape than this. More importantly, this model should be three dimensional (at least more than this Powerpoint chart illustrates). If you have visited the Grand Canyon, what do you recall about your visit? What spaces do these sensations occupy in your mind? Mine would include the smell of pinyon in a Flagstaff restaurant, an American three-toed woodpecker feeding in a burned area in the national forest, and the thrill of standing with my grandchildren at the South Rim mesmerized by the sunset.

Grand Canyon Sunset

Here are a couple of additional examples to mull over. The White House is a small place, occupying an extraordinarily large space in the American mind. The Alamo in San Antonio is similar. Many visitors to the Alamo are surprised that the mission is so small. Fairmount Park is an expansive, diverse place, but a small space. Few people know the actual extent of the Fairmount Park system, and relate only to their favorite place within it.

Conservation agencies and organizations are understandably focused on place. A place can be purchased, fenced, posted, and protected. However, how people relate to these efforts (and their willingness to support their protection) is defined by their personal perception of the space. Whether or not they value a place is determined by how they perceive the space.

Therefore my second step in reshaping our conservation movement (remember the first? Take it to the streets!) is that we need to create more spaces for places. The world is full of place conservers. We need more space makers.

McDonalds is a fast-food joint that sells hamburgers. There are around 14,000 McDonalds in the US, and each occupies a discrete place or location. But what about the space that McDonalds occupies in the American psyche? Consider that 93% of American children can identify a McDonalds by its golden arches. How many can identify a national park by the arrowhead logo? Which has a larger American space – McDonalds or the National Park Service?

Fortunately, the technology exists for us to create space for place. We do not need McDonalds advertising budget to construct an American space for American places. Consider all of the places that should be brought to the attention of the public, and the spaces they combine to form. I am interested in the smallest neighborhood park to Yellowstone National Park. How many are in your community? What spaces do they occupy in your and your neighbor’s lives?

The U.S. is in the midst of the worst economic recession in my lifetime. When state and federal budgets are slashed, who gets cut first? Places, such as parks, refuges, and sanctuaries are the first to go. Is this because they are not valuable places? Of course not. Political leaders hatchet our treasured places because they occupy limited space in the interests and concerns of the voting public. In other words, our places are easy marks, and we who strive to protect them are defenseless chumps.

I am not willing to go through another budget or political cycle so defenseless. We must develop the tools to collect our places into aggregations that occupy critical social space in the lives of our citizens. It is not enough to limit our efforts to simply protecting places. We have no choice but to squeeze ourselves into the American space.

I do have ideas about how to accomplish this, and I will write more in the near future. We need the tools to stitch these places into seamless spaces, and the media necessary to present these spaces to America.

In the meantime, let me remind you of my first two steps of a renewed conservation movement:

1. Take it to the street
2. Space for place

Ted Eubanks
13 Sep 2010

Enhanced by Zemanta