Parasols, Water Slides, and Dragons: Towards a Hydro-Social Understanding of St. Paul's Phalen Park
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Parasols, Water Slides, and Dragons: Towards a Hydro-Social Understanding of St. Paul's Phalen Park
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2018
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This archival study traces Phalen Park’s development from a romanticized, country-side
escape from the city of St. Paul to a community park with a Chinese garden and dragon boat
festivals in a racially diverse neighborhood. By contextualizing Phalen within studies on urban
parks, Phalen emerges as a biophysical space with water quality and quantity concerns and as a
social space where people interact, recreate, and are socially controlled. These concepts of
Phalen as a biophysical and a social space minimally address the contestation and power
relations that led Phalen Park to be what it is today. Political ecology and the concept of the
hydro-social provide frameworks for addressing these power relations and point towards two
conclusions. First, further investigations of park history should explicitly discuss contestation in
the development of the park, perhaps focusing on the rise of neighborhood organizations in the
1970s and their correlation with changing neighborhood demographics. Second, questions
should be raised regarding park management and community engagement, such as how the park
is currently managed and how a sense of stewardship is built among the new populations
surrounding the park.
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Baldwin, Katharine. (2018). Parasols, Water Slides, and Dragons: Towards a Hydro-Social Understanding of St. Paul's Phalen Park. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/208565.
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