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 socio-demographic 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.

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

Urban national parks were designed in the 1970s to bring nature and recreational opportunities to socio-economically disadvantaged communities in the USA. Using the theoretical frame of environmental justice, this paper discusses findings of a recent survey of visitors to Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area – the United States' largest urban national park. Findings show park visitors were predominantly white, affluent, and lived nearby. People of colour travelled further, were significantly less likely to be return visitors, and were less inclined to use the park for active recreation. Seemingly, this park fails to meet the needs of the disadvantaged urban communities for whom it was created, a problem that may also affect other parks in the United States and potentially parks in other countries. Park planners and managers can take practical steps to increase accessibility to this park for people of colour and low-income earners, and should monitor other parks for patterns of ethn...

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Planning for environmental justice in an urban national park

It has been said that national parks are “America's Best Idea,” they are among the most famous and instantly recognizable places in the country, and they attract visitors from all over the world. Yet visitors to these sites are overwhelmingly white. A number of theoretical perspectives have been proposed for the absence of minority visitors, including socioeconomic marginality, differing cultural norms, and the lingering legacy of discrimination, but geography is not one of the usual explanations. Given the strong associations between particular regions of the country and the locations of parks, as well as the uneven spatial distribution of population, the absence of geography as an explanation is striking. We examine this issue with the expectation that geography is an important part of the explanation for low minority visitation rates. Put simply, do potential minority visitors live anywhere near national park units? Are they more likely to visit the ones to which they live nearest? This study uses the ...

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Why Do So Few Minority People Visit National Parks? Visitation and the Accessibility of “America's Best Idea”

Studies of recreation patterns have rarely focused on beach-going behavior and its determinants. This paper develops a conceptual model emphasizing relationships between beach-going, and individual...

Beach Recreation, Cultural Diversity and Attitudes toward Nature

This article examines how structural and symbolic forces combine to produce racialized discourses of belonging and geographies of exclusion in and around downhill skiing. Drawing from literatures i...

Black Skiing, Everyday Racism, and the Racial Spatiality of Whiteness:

In the summer of 1870, the nation's most famous ex-slave and revered abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, wrote to an associate, \"Heretofore, colored Americans have thought little of adorning their parlors with pictures. They have to do with the stem, and I may say, the ugly realities of life. Pictures come not with slavery and oppression and destitution, but with liberty, fair play, leisure, and refinement.\"' When Douglass penned these lines, the vast majority of ex-slaves had experienced only five years of freedom. There were stories of a few fabulously successful blacks, most of whom had earned their freedom years, even decades earlier. However, the average freedman worked long hours for little more than subsistence wages. In the eyes of whites, and perhaps for many blacks as well, any thoughts of significant black leisure appeared far-fetched, even unnatural. In the late nineteenth century, however, determined blacks found ways to enjoy leisure, and this often irritated whites. Such \"conflict\" provided part of the backdrop for the famous Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896 which institutionalized segregation in public accommodations until 1954. Prosperous blacks from New Orleans were arranging large group excursions by rail to resort areas along the Gulf Coast. The presence of significant numbers of well-dressed blacks enjoying themselves offended some whites, who pressured the railroads to enforce state segregation laws. In response, a group of well-connected blacks, supported by liberal white friends, sued the railroads. This eventually led to the famous decision, which allowed \"separate but equal\" public accommodations.2 A century ago, \"Jim Crow\" segregation became the law of the nation. Despite all of the obstacles and prejudice they faced, by the late nineteenth century several thousand blacks nationwide had established distinguished careers, prosperous businesses, comfortable homes, and impressive incomes and investment portfolios.3 Comparatively little attention has been paid to them. Aside from biographies of distinguished blacks, most scholars have concentrated on the masses of blacks who suffered relentless oppression, grinding poverty, and distressingly narrow opportunities for improving their circumstances during the \"Jim Crow\" era. Certainly the experiences of the downtrodden deserve attention, but so do lives of those who defied all the odds and gained wealth. How could affluent blacks spend their disposable income? Under

Mark S. Foster

Papers

In the Face of "Jim Crow": Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and Outdoor Leisure, 1890-1945