Unintended Consequences: The Accidental Meadows of Windsor, Ontario

In brief, the city union laborers of Windsor, Ontario have been on strike for a really long time (started April 15, 2009). And every place you look it seems to be getting uglier.

Except in a few places. Given three months vacation from mowers and clippers, the city’s parks have grown from unkempt green spaces to veritable meadows. And while the good citizens of Windsor took the lawn into their own hands at a few parks by cutting the grass themselves, no one could keep up, and mini-prairies currently dot the landscape.

Now, there were a number of places that looked quite nice to the people at Broken City Lab. So they did what great designers do best: they merged vision with opportunity and came up with this “Naturalized Area” sign project, embarked upon, in their own words, “in hopes that these signs might momentarily allow residents of Windsor to look at these naturalized spaces for what they are—that is, wonderful additions to our urban landscape—instead of the result of a politically-charged issue.”

Best case scenario? Strike ends, eyes open, minds change, meadows stay. As my boss says, more on this later.

While there’s a tale of lemons and lemonade to be told here, more importantly, I think there’s a point about paradigms emerging (for those of us who don’t have garbage piling up on our curbs and do have the time to intellectualize about these things). When we’re all talking about building green spaces, what do we mean by green space? Sustainable green? Or just green green?

My hunch is we think of green green grass, and that we confine our thinking to grass, and give the powers that be the impression that grass is a number one boffo idea. Now that I’ve seen what’s happened in Windsor, my hunch is we settle for grass, maybe because grass is the easy get in a short attention span world. Or maybe because grass comes in rolls that look like Ho-Ho’s.

Mmm. Ho-Ho’s.

What’s the argument in favor of grass? in the spring it’s green. In summer it’s a wonderful shade of green. then in the fall it stays green. then in the winter you can’t see it.

This is Gold Medal Park in downtown Minneapolis. A huge victory for the city and the Guthrie Theatre, et. al. considering the land’s enormous value to residential developers. And it is a beautiful, complete transformation (that hill wasn’t there) designed from corner to corner. I often wonder, though, if they went a little crazy with the sod, considering the namesake of the park, Gold Medal Flour, which I’m told used an awful lot of…wheat.

Is there room for a little wheat space in a green space this big? Leaving room for frisbee and wiffle ball, of course.

The events in Windsor remind me to think about how a positive buzzword like “green-space” can actually limit our vision if we aren’t careful, and how we designers can use our knack for questioning convention, for shakin’ the cage, to effect change…if we just pay attention.

I won’t be able to drive past a green space without wondering what it would look like if a portion of it were left wild. What if your fair city stopped mowing the lawns? Where do you think the loveliest accidental meadows would pop up?

Thanks to Wooster Collective for the post that got me all introspective.

posted by Bill on Jul 24, 08:10 AM. Filed under  

Comment

  1. great post. especially the mmm. ho-hos. :)

    — jessica · Jul 24, 09:08 AM · #

  2. A few years ago in the twin cities there was no money to mow along the highways and the long native grasses looked gorgeous. Sod on the other hand is a chemically maintained monoculture with run off properties close to that of concrete ironically making it one of the least green things we can do for the landscape. I have no desire to do away with play space but I’m for more meadows, particularly along water where they do a great job of filtering.

    Each of us can consider our own yards. Do you need a lawn? Do you actually use if for anything? We tore ours up and haven’t missed if a bit. Working in the garden is creative and cathartic, provides insect, bird and animal habitat, gives passers by something nice to look at and apparently exposes you to an enzyme in the soil that makes you feel good.

    Thanks for the thoughtful post Bill.

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