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Article Excerpt
Boulder, Colorado, is often lauded, and often praises itself, for its proximity to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, its outdoorsy, active lifestyle, and its high quality of life. A New York Times article boldly proclaimed that "if you're a bike-riding, cliff-rappelling, latte-loving, eco-certified boho tycoon, there is heaven on Earth-and it's called Boulder." (1) Originally a gateway to smaller mining towns, Boulder is located at the point where the long, flat prairies and plains stretching west from the Mississippi River are suddenly vaulted into the sky, just twenty miles from the Continental Divide. Walking west from neighborhoods on the western edge of the city of Boulder brings a challenging change in elevation, from the once treeless prairie to a hilly and cliff-accented forest full of ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, mule deer, bears, mountain lions, peregrine falcons, and hundreds of miles of trails. Very few houses are perched on the foothills because construction was prevented by the city's century-long history of environmental conservation.
In addition to wildlife on the trails, one finds Boulder residents hiking, trail running, loaded with climbing gear, or astride a mountain bike. One thing the hikers, bikers, climbers, skiers, picnickers, and swimmers have in common is that, if prompted, most will praise the beauty of the landscape, the enjoyment of fresh air, and the great opportunities for exercise and enjoyment provided by Boulder's conservation landscape. The symbol commonly used to represent Boulder is the profile of the Flatirons, the huge orange-brown rocks that tower above the city.
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Not only do the Flatirons dominate the view from the city, they also represent the city's orientation to the swath of green in which they are nestled. Planners and residents of Boulder appear to have an affinity for all things characterized as green, "eco," hippie, environmentally progressive, organic, outdoorsy, athletic, or healthy. This characterization is expressed explicitly in local newspaper, magazine, and radio advertisements. It is visible in the number of outdoor-gear stores and environmentally themed boutique storefronts in Boulder's downtown. It is expressed less explicitly in residents' everyday conversations, including those overheard in locally owned, Italian-themed, bicycle-decorated coffee shops in which avid rock climbers one-up each other with name-dropping matches. (2)
Those who live in or visit Boulder cannot help but notice not only the high quality of life but also the high cost of living, which results in an above-average concentration of residents with high incomes or healthy trust funds. The average household income in the City of Boulder in 2000, for example, was over seventy thousand dollars, more than twice the national average. (3) Paired with the startling number of wealthy residents is the much-remarked-on majority of white residents and a relatively small number of racial or ethnic minorities. It is not uncommon to hear residents and visitors comment on how "white" Boulder is or on how few black people one sees on the street. In addition, some African American residents express feelings of isolation and special attention in public places in Boulder. (4) These perceptions of Boulder's natural beauty, high quality of life, and wealthy, white population are linked in subtle and complex ways in both residents' geographic imaginary and the city's history.
In this essay, I look at how Boulder has come to be seen as so green and so white. I draw on preliminary field research, including surveys, interviews, and participant observation, as well as personal experience living in Boulder and conversations with Boulder residents about my research. (5) I use both ideological and discursive analyses of landscape to sketch a view of the natural landscape as an agent of history and ideology in Boulder. The idea of landscape creates a conceptual space in which to trace the articulations of the social and material worlds, so it has the potential to bring together representational, metaphorical, social, material, and embodied realms. Recent contributions to the landscape literature emphasize the importance of landscapes not only as texts, codes, and signs but also as material realities that affect and are affected by social relations. (6) Employing an analysis of discursive formations, I look at how race and class are mapped onto, obscured by, or read off conservation landscapes. Using Boulder's peculiar assemblage of social relations, I argue that landscape is a particularly productive object of analysis for advancing a rich theorization of the relationship among environment, race, and class because, at its most robust, it encompasses both material and semiotic realities and takes into account the social relations of class, race, gender, and environmentalism.
Geographic landscape studies look beyond the apparently natural or built environment to the social history and historical power relations of a place. (7) In 1967, Boulder was the first city in the nation to pass a tax via referendum to provide funds to acquire and maintain open space, starting with the acquisition of one thousand acres in the foothills on the western edge of the city. In subsequent decades, the city has spent more than two hundred million dollars to acquire more than forty-five thousand acres. (8) The histories of such conservation policies are often obscured by a commonsense acceptance of the importance of the majesty of the Flatirons and the taken-for-granted protection of pristine, natural landscapes.
A study of landscape is necessarily about social relations. (9) What made this conservation zoning and tax possible? What social relations create and maintain the space of environmental governance summed up in the slogan "Twenty-five square miles surrounded by reality"? (10) What racial, class, and power dynamics are at work in this landscape? In policy and everyday conversation, the natural landscape is framed as a straightforward material reality separate from people but needing our protection from modernization and development. Landscape theorists point out that this framing is itself a social representation of the landscape, which constructs an exclusion of the human experiences, physical transformations, policies, and representations of the natural landscape that also constitute it.
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The social practices through which natural landscapes are produced, reworked, and contested are often folded back into the natural aspects of landscape through normalizing claims of the wisdom of conservation activities. This view seems to suggest that social actions are determined by the physical landscape itself. Such passive agency given to the hills, cliffs, animals, and plants greenwashes the social aspects of the landscape. The greenwashing creates a space for classist and racist assumptions to reside unnoticed or unquestioned. Yet, they persist and can be glimpsed occasionally in policy justifications and in everyday conversation. Placing Boulder's natural landscape at the center of my analysis allows me to tease out the constituent elements of the particular discursive formations of race, class, and nature in Boulder
Green Belt: Views of the Natural Landscape through Social Relations
In Boulder, the natural landscape has served as an ideological force. It is employed in conservation narratives to hide the landscape's social histories of racial and class privilege. The naturalization of the landscape has separated issues of race and class from Boulder's outdoorsy quality of life, despite their central role in its history. Landscape theorists analyze the way representations of natural landscapes hide the social histories that shaped the landscapes. (11) Labor relations and conservation policies are forgotten in admiration of nature. (12) Commonsense binaries such as nature versus culture obscure race and class aspects of the conservation politics. Material natural landscapes are called on to legitimize and explain social phenomena, including Boulder's above-average income and high cost of living. Boulder's green belt--the natural landscape that surrounds the city--both justifies the cost of living and enables the quality of life.
The much-admired majesty and uniqueness of Boulder's natural landscapes have obscured its labor-intensive formation and maintenance. In an ideological landscape, social relations are removed from their histories and portrayed as natural. (13) Nature, not history, becomes responsible for inequality. (14) Likewise, social inequalities in Boulder, including its wealthy white characterization, are often shifted into a discourse about who enjoys, appreciates, or can afford to live near nature rather than questions of who is excluded and why. Exclusion is naturalized through the defense of the city's green belt, deflecting critiques of city planning. Emphasis...
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