I will refine this statement as everything can be viewed through a political lens.
Political ecology examines power dynamics, social justice, and state or corporate policies that shape cultural landscapes; who gets to decide these policies and who gets marginalized and left out of the discussion. Critiquing urban landscapes through a political ecology lens reveals that landscapes are never neutral that in fact they are shaped by power, economics, and social inequalities.
I recently took an excellent Tree Politics class at The New York Botanical Gardens led by Will Thompson. In the class, we examined the role of trees in history using a political ecology lens. In particular, we studied how landscapes are shaped by social and biological forces. The following is my class project and submission; examining a landscape using the academic readings from class. Disclaimer: Edgerton Park is my favorite park in New Haven. I have taken Master Gardener classes in the carriage house and have attended too many cultural events to list here. My examination is an academic critique using a political ecology lens and I thought I would share this viewpoint.
In the picture we see a 12-foot-high trap rock wall, reinforced by evergreen conifers and deciduous trees. Pinus strobus (Eastern White Pine), Picea abies (Norway Spruce), and Quercus coccinea (Scarlet Oak), to name a few, are planted around the perimeter of the 22 acre public park in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven. These trees tower 75-100 feet in height.
Historically, Edgerton Park was home to the Quinnipiac tribe. It is unclear when Eli Whitney acquired the land. It is also not quite clear when Whitney constructed a grand Victorian house named “Ivy Nook” for his niece Caroline Whitney Baldwin, some sources state around 1875. After her death in 1905, Frederick F. Brewster purchased the property and proceeded to tear down Ivy Nook. He built a 50 room Tudor style mansion called “Edgerton”. Brewster inherited great wealth from his father Benjamin who was involved in the formation of Standard Oil, the building of the Manhattan Elevated Railway, and who also financed several large railroad projects. Brewster’s new mansion and landscape was designed by Robert Storer Stephenson in 1909. The landscape was inspired by England’s “Capability Brown" with its winding tree walk and man-made hills; “The Country Place Era” as it has been described. Design credit is also given to AJ Downing's landscape design work for large suburban mansion residences and hardscape features that resemble Fredrick Law Olmsted’s style. Brewster wrote in his will that the mansion be torn down after the death of his wife (in 1963) and that the property was to be turned over to the City of New Haven to be used as a public park. What features remain are the gatehouse, stone bridge, the Brewster fountain, greenhouse, carriage house and stone wall.
The Edgerton estate was a retreat from the industrial city for its owners. Privacy was the "utmost concern”. The use of both the 12 foot wall and the use of long living towering trees were used to screen "undesirable or unwanted views” and were designed to act as a barrier. Stephenson raised the level of the interior ground around the wall. The extra soil both “deadens street noise and raises eye level”. It can be argued that Edgerton Park started as a “Green Wall” (Gobster,1998) as a double walled off private estate and is now considered to be a “Green Magnet” where the community events are held; educational programs, Shakespeare in the Park, winter sledding, and community gardens. The stone wall and tree wall are not the most welcoming, sometimes confusing to tourists whether they are permitted to enter, and perhaps at times, may still act as a barrier.
Edgerton Park is a strong case study for an article by Heynan et al. (2006) “As with other housing amenities, households with high income tend to have greater disposable resources that can be used for tree planting and maintenance. Hence, upper income residences tend to have more, and better maintained canopy cover on their properties”. Paul Robbin’s thesis of environmental conflict and exclusion comes to mind as the Brewsters were benefactors of American imperialism. They were Gilded age inheritors who could afford the luxuries of an estate and its landscape, using them to signal to others their social status. This classism of course was built upon the ugly history of mass displacement of indigenous peoples and others, altered natural ecosystems by the increase in pollution and extraction of natural resources through the expansion of the railroad and through the exploration of gas and oil.
For more information:
Classes by Subject | New York Botanical Garden
Bibliography:
Gobster, P. H. (1998). Urban parks as green walls or green magnets? Interracial relations in neighborhood boundary parks. Landscape and Urban Planning, 41(1), 43–55
Heynen, N., Perkins, H. A., & Roy, P. (2006). The political ecology of uneven urban green space: The impact of political economy on race and ethnicity in producing environmental inequality in Milwaukee. Urban Affairs Review, 42(1), 3–25.
https://newhavenurbanism.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/edgerton-park.pdf
National Registry of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, (National Park Services March 10, 1998).
Robbins, P. (2019). Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (3rd ed). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pgs. 11-24.
