The Potential of Place Meanings for Negotiating Difference among Birdwatchers and Dog-Walkers at a Multiple-Use Urban Forest

Abstract

The concept of encounters may initially seem contradictory to expectations of solitude in an urban forest. Indeed, the physical features of urban forests can isolate users from many reminders of city life, thereby providing opportunity for reduced anxiety, increased contemplativeness, and a sense of peacefulness (Ulrich, 1981; Kaplan, 1983; Hartig et al., 1991). Yet the apparent benefits associated with visiting urban forests are not solely tied to the physical attributes of an environment, but also found in the social interactions that occur within such spaces. Stewart (2006: 408) observed that the meanings people hold of outdoor spaces are ‘situationally-defined and dependent upon negotiations with other people’. Interestingly, the role of multiple species — not just human beings — in this negotiation process has yet to be studied intensively and is therefore insufficiently understood, at least within the field of leisure studies. Research in outdoor recreation, for instance, has repeatedly acknowledged potential for conflict when different user groups interact (Vaske et al., 2004). Yet focus is typically placed on understanding and managing unpleasant encounters between apparently polarized user groups at a recreation site, and the extent to which these can spoil individual human experience (Moore, 1994). Researchers and managers often fail to consider animals as ‘potential consumers themselves and/or influences on their human companions’ consumption of the leisure experience’ (Carr, 2009: 410).