Abstract
Many nature spaces in urban environments, which fall outside the designation “parkland,” have become invisible, neglected, and trashed. However, they are also the sites of children’s play forts and secret places. This chapter inquires into the twin phenomena of garbage and play forts as a consequence of a peculiar invisibility of nature. Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of territorialization is applied to think through the phenomenon of garbage by addressing the political dimensions of the invisibility of nature in local urban settings and the loss of a relationship with nature places in cities. Langeveld’s concept of determined and undetermined places helps us grasp the importance of children’s secret nature places and develop a model for a renewed topophilia, which leads to attachment and care for local natural places and their psychological inclusion in a neighborhood’s commons.
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Simms, EM. (2014). The Invisibility of Nature: Garbage, Play Forts, and the Deterritorialization of Urban Nature Spaces. In: Vakoch, D., Castrillón, F. (eds) Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9619-9_15
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