This Article Full Text (OnlineFirst PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0309132509103156v1 33/6/743    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Byrne, J. Articles by Wolch, J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Nature, race, and parks: past research and future directions for geographic research

¹ Griffith School of Environment, G31, 3.06 Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, Queensland, 4222, Australia
² College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, 230 Wurster Hall 1820, Berkeley, CA 94720-1820, USA

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

Geographic research on parks has been wide-ranging but has seldom examined how and why people use parks, leaving these questions to leisure science, which privileges sociodemographic variables over urban socio-spatial explanations (eg, historical, political-economic, and location factors). This article examines recent geographic perspectives on park use, drawing upon environmental justice, cultural landscape, and political ecology paradigms to redirect our attention from park users to a more critical appreciation of the historical, socio-ecological, and political-economic processes that operate through, and in turn shape, park spaces and park-going behaviors. We challenge partial, user-orientated approaches and suggest new directions for geographic research on parks

Key Words: cultural landscape, environmental justice, nature, political ecology, race, urban parks

First published on March 13, 2009, doi:10.1177/0309132509103156

Progress in Human Geography 2009;33:743.

A more recent version of this article appeared on December 1, 2009


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?