My Central Park: subjective readings of Central Park, its meaning and use

Empirical part: interviewing, whom?
- “What does Central Park mean to you?”
- What are doing there, when and with whom?”

A city can be understood as a socially understood text or as a virtual object. The textualist interpretation stresses the city as an object for cultural consumption for tourists and for aesthetic apprehension, stressing both the spectacles and the picturesque elements of the city. (Lefevbre 1996, 149.)

Is the Helsinki Central Park a park as it a forest? Places can be “produced”. For instance, as the Helsinki Central Park is essentially a forest, it is yet called a park. Helsinki Park is another more recent example of place producing of this kind; areas usually conceived as Eastern parts of the Central Park has recently been labelled officially as Helsinki Park, stretching down to the seashores of Helsinki. Yet this concept is not quite well known.

An easy and readily available, obvious positive answer would be to be content in mere declaring that it is a park because it is called such. A more elaborate and functionalist way of answering would be to find out, what it is used for and whether it serves the park functions. If a negative answer is accepted, then what is it if not a park? It surely looks like a forest, albeit not an untouched wilderness for sure. So, it is obviously a forest, a stretch of the nature in a city. Having this as the starting point, then relationship between nature and man-made environment– changed over time and different in different places - needs to be studied.

Does Central Park respond to the need of public space? Is it a public space at all or is it private/privately conceived/experienced public space?

According to Cresswell, issues connected with places are those of boundaries and rootedness (Cresswell 2004, 79). Central Park the physical environment, the space characterising it becomes a place when humans attach meaning and use it. Yi-Fu Tuan describes the process when places become emotionally important by the term “topophilia” According to Edward Relph, spaces can provide settings for human actions, but it is only these actions that make the spaces places. (ibid., 19-21.) The insiders have an authentic relationship to places, marking their authenticity (ibid., 44).

There are different interpretations of a place. Human geographers emphasize power relations in constructing and defining places. Marxist geographer David Harvey stresses that places are scenes for struggles for identity, where different actors have differing means and extent of power. (ibid 2007, 26). Those in power – according to de Certeau - tend to pre-define the desired use of space, attaching “prescriptions” to it. On the other hand, humans tend to re-interpret physical environment and attach new modes of use and meanings to physical environment (ibid., 36-39).

The constructivist interpretations maintains that there are no “authentic” places but instead all places, even the material conditions of places are all socially constructed, this also affecting to the use of the places. Nigel Thrift maintains that all places are constructed by “doing” subjects and that places always change, they are never finite. (ibid., 37.) Furthermore, they can be characterised by mobility: places can serve as transitional spaces, spaces for routes leading to one place to another.

According to David Seamon, most human geographers tend to exaggerate the interpreting subject. He reminds that also bodily practices – time-space routines form places, for example use of a certain physical setting defines the nature of a space significantly. These time-space routines include the practices how people move around and use physical space. (ibid., 33-34).

As an example, in the Moland history of Oslomarka are mentioned different “stories” of Marka.
"Den lyse fortellingen" - the happy folks of Oslo using Oslomarka for their recreation. "Den mørke fortellingen" - the nomadic nature of the habitation of those who work in Marka. "Fortellinger innenfra" - how it has been to work and to live in Nordmarka. "Den nye fortellingen" - opposing the growth of city, at the expense of its extension to Marka. (Moland 2006, 176-178)