Urban cultural ecology and anthropology: what they
contribute to an understanding of urban ecosystems.
John B. Wolford, author and Whitney Watson,
poster design - Missouri Historical Society
Culture
The ideals, values, and beliefs members of a society share to interpret experience and generate behavior
William Haviland, Cultural Anthropology
Crowd, Dogtown Parade, 1999
Cultural Symbols
objects or events, sounds or gestures that stand for meanings among a group of people
People in any society communicate through symbols, whether through words, objects, or actions. Symbols represent ourselves to others—especially, our perceptions of ourselves.
A shrine to an agrarian past, in a St. Louis neighborhood
St. Patrick's Day Parade vendor and his symbolic wares
Landscape
Whether road, park, house, cemetery, church, or city center, our built environment is a symbolic expression of our cultural values.
Broad sweep, Jewish Cemetery
Forest Park, Golf Course toward Skinker Blvd.
House in North Pointe, in St. Louis
Houses in Summit Heights, in St. Louis County
Hyde Park Church
Society
[I]n building a neighbourhood that meets human needs...,we can build for contact with other human beings, with the physical environment, with the living world, and with the experiences through which the individual's full humanity can be realized.
Margaret Mead Neighbourhoods and human needs
Kinship
Recognizing people's kin ties to one another, and how those ties affect people's manipulation of and adaptation to the environment, enlightens our understanding of how and why people situate themselves in an environment.
Family enjoying Dogtown parade in front of their decorated house
Children lined up on curb at St. Patrick's Parade
Communitas
People are social creatures who strive to create a sense of community, a place wherein they live, work, or play together. Any community is always part of a larger ecosystem.
In public, we mingle:
Irish pub in an Irish community during an Irish Parade
In private, we keep within our boundaries:
Houses along Sidney Street, Benton Park
There are, however, some people who would like to keep everything within a safe, closed environment—keep all the cars out, keep all the strangers out, and turn the neighbourhood into a grass plot where all the children can run.
Margaret Mead Neighbourhoods and human needs, 1972: 247
The gated (and symbolically closed) community of Hortense Place, CWE
Industrial technology both distances people from nature and allows for their unprecedented impact on and consumption of nature.
Construction equipment at a local university
An aerating pipe for the water system in Forest Park, St. Louis
Cultural Ecology
The heart of cultural ecology: the way man-man relations modify man-Nature relations in particular representative cases, and how the results affect the future of both.
John W. Bennett, The ecological transition
Canada goose at former watering site
Former house site in Kinloch, Missouri
ethno-environmentalism: "a humanized version of the current concern for the natural environment." Cities are not something to flee from: people and nature can achieve harmonious interaction within cities.
John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A sense of place, a sense of time
![[Early] Rush Hour, I-64 at Bellevue leaving St. Louis](wolford18.jpg)
[Early] Rush hour, I-64 at Bellevue, leaving St. Louis
It is when we recognize the role we have played and continue to play whenever we plow a field, put in a garden, preserve an endangered species, or build a road that we learn a greater awareness of our relationship to the green environment.
John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A sense of place, a sense of time
Former city road, Kinloch, Missouri
Two boys in their city garden
Markers
All people, of all times, of all places, put their stamp on the landscape—they mark it with their identity. We all shape a landscape to fit our culture. We all shape a culture to fit our landscapes.
Writing an initial in stone
