Getting over the fence: Realising city parks’ boundaries through Urban Park Rangers’ practical action

• In Event: 4162 - Redefining Place

Abstract

This paper explores the local organisation of city park spaces in the context of the wider urban built environment. It seeks to realise their boundaries by considering their regular accomplishment through the routine practical action of those tasked with their maintenance and management. Tracing the quotidian work of the Urban Park Ranger Service in the Welsh capital city of Cardiff, it is argued that while the materiality of the fences that circumscribe urban park space do accountably impact upon public mobilities and territorialisation, the Urban Park Rangers’ ground-level responsibility and practice does not strictly adhere to these spatial demarcations. The fence is a spatial marker, but the Rangers’ everyday responsibilities go beyond it, saying something of the relational aspects of park space within the built environment.

Following on from a discussion of the practice of ‘locking up’ partially-fenced city parks at night, the analysis ‘gets over the fence’ by illustrating the re-spatialisation of their practice through the empirical examples of: (1) the public’s expectation of Rangers to deal with wild geese wandering out onto the adjacent roads; and (2) their pre-emptive litter picking strategies and the subsequent obligation to maintain peripheral urban areas. The data traces the Rangers’ own re-negotiation of park boundaries, demonstrating what the configuration and territorialisation of park space looks like as an accomplishment of everyday practical action. It concludes in appreciation of the materiality of park space insofar as it is practically accomplished and organised by the regular work and interactions of the Urban Park Rangers.

Author

• Jonathan Ablitt, Cardiff University