Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
facilities, gated communities, airports…. These facilities, which are usually private but
freely open to the public, have created new debates concerning…what is termed 'quasi-
public' or 'hybrid' space. The result is that public access to these spaces is at the
discretion of the landowner'. Critiques of such spaces for leisure (e.g. Uzzell 1995)
illustrate that even private spaces, such as malls, provide social places and spaces which
meet many psychological needs and preferences, particularly in terms of leisure
consumption. This space is controlled, replacing a former communal culture and public
spaces which met many informal needs for leisure like parks and open spaces. These mall
spaces have been seen as leading to a sense of placelessness (Relph 1976), where they do
not develop a relationship with the place/space for leisure. Therefore, highly managed
and secure areas like malls may reduce the perception of fear, but conversely these
privately managed spaces will detract from people developing a positive relationship with
the space, that people do with urban open spaces.
Indeed, Koskela and Pain (2000:279) argued that 'Geographers and planners should
take
greater account of the complexity of fear… Places have some influence on fear, but
perhaps of equal or greater significance is the ways in which fear shapes our
understanding, perception and use of space and place'. This is certainly a truism in the
case of recreational use of urban parks in Madge's (1997) findings which have a wider
application to urban recreational resource use in the developed world. A great deal of
progress will need to be made in addressing fear of crime and recreational and leisure
spaces in urbanised societies until Koskela and Pain's (2000:274) analysis that 'Green
urban spaces and woodlands are commonly perceived as dangerous places and feelings of
insecurity often have a deterrent effect on women's use of them' is no longer a valid
assessment. Yet simply providing synthetic and artificially created leisure spaces such as
malls as a substitute will not meet such informal leisure needs, since many private leisure
spaces within cities are highly designed environments connected with and motivated by
consumption, which by their very nature may also exclude some groups who are unable
to access the resources to be consumers.
SUMMARY POINTS
• The geography of fear is an important factor shaping participation by certain social
groups in recreational activities.
• The problem of fear affects certain groups participation patterns (e.g. elderly people and
women) more than others.
• The creation of safer recreational open spaces is more problematic since it will involve
greater surveillance, monitoring and control of informal leisure spaces.
• The new cultural geography, particularly the geography of gender, provides invaluable
insights to explain how women's leisure space is embedded in notions of fear,
constraints on the use of urban space and the resultant inequalities.
• Purpose-built and artificially created urban spaces, like malls, are not a substitute for
urban open space
• A more detailed discussion of the development and use of urban parks can be found in
Chapter 5.
