Parasols, Water Slides, and Dragons: Towards a Hydro-Social Understanding of St. Paul's Phalen Park

Abstract

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.