Park in the Dark: How the park becomes scary at night and what we can do about it

It's 5:00pm on a chilly November day in Oxford. You just got out of class and you're looking forward to meeting your friend for a run in the University Parks. But alas: you arrive at the gate; it's locked shut.

Park staff say that the park closes when the sun sets to maintain the security and integrity of the park. So what does it mean for the park to have security and integrity? Who decides how security and integrity ought to be maintained? How does darkness threaten the security and integrity of the park?

In 1961, anti-urban planner Jane Jacobs challenged us to think of parks as "places that need the boon of life and appreciation conferred on them." Sixty years later, her writings resonate. Parks are not merely green, open spaces; they are also communal spaces where people engage in all sorts of activities. Without the "boon of life," parks in the dark become enclosed spaces to be feared.

Parks are in a state of becoming in accordance with their policies, ownership, and rules. If conferred upon them, they are ripe with potential as shared spaces for a wide range of activities, both in daylight and the dark. Beyond ambiguous notions of 'security' and 'integrity', such parks are convivial, shared, and communally co-constituted. But this outcome is seldom realized when parks are closed.

To forgo the notion of the park at night as an inherently dangerous place highlights that the University Park's closure at dark in the name of 'integrity' and 'security' ironically compromises the park's integrity and security. Closing the park sets the tone and reinforces the idea that there is something inherently unsafe about the park in the dark.

The assumptions underlying park closure have harmful broader outcomes. Through this logic, there is an assumption that at night people may harm the park or each other. Subsequently, when parks are closed, community members' embodied experiences and mobilities are restricted and directed in and around their community spaces. Biopower, a concept employed by French social theorist Michel Foucault, emerges as people's actions are surveilled and controlled by both park staff as well as each other.

Consequently, notions of parks as being either strongly controlled and secure or open and insecure create a false binary, for societal norms permeate despite closure. Community self-surveillance controls acceptable behaviors in manners that increase 'security' and 'integrity' regardless. There is therefore a faulty assumption that individuals cannot be trusted and may only be put in check through unequal power enforcement rather than through community embeddedness.

The consequence of making parks in the dark feel unsafe in an embodied sense for many individuals is oftentimes justified within a range of gendered and racialized dynamics. Embodied experiences, mobilities, accessibility, and individuals' own senses of privacy and security are controlled, directed, or undermined.

If parks indeed need the boon of life conferred upon them, what if we were to imagine them as previously described-- convivial, communal, involved spaces? What if we transformed the role of community in the maintenance of park 'security' and 'integrity' from the normalizing role of caution and self-surveillance to one of participation, activity, and interconnection? What could this look like?

Community engagement is the primary factor that contributes to a sense of belonging to or ownership of space. Possible methods include the creation of formal plans, regular management meetings, and data collection tools such as surveys or meetings. Participants could comprise a set of volunteers or randomly selected park strollers, in addition to a set of organizations or groups that take interest in such initiatives (e.g. Friends of South Park Oxford or Oxford Climate Society).

There are a number of initiatives through which to avoid park closure, ensure that the surrounding community, students, staff, and residents benefit from shared space, and that circumvent forms of surveillance and policing. One source of inspiration is the Parks After Dark program, which offers extended hours and special activities with the aim of providing people with "safe, fun experiences in their communities."

In addition to prevention of enclosure and surveillance, using park space for activities initiated by and for the community could challenge the status quo in other ways. Additional sources of information include NPRA's Parks for Inclusion and City of Portland's Parks for New Portlanders, which aim to provide opportunities and programs that directly support marginalized groups, including LGBTQ+ and refugee communities. This design would not only push for activities that meet the community's needs, but also for infrastructure that fits into their imagination of safety and comfort (e.g. streetlights), all while maintaining privacy and sovereignty.

Community involvement will ensure a more sovereign and equitable form of 'security' and 'integrity.' We may also take this imaginative exercise even further and question the concept of land/property ownership (through which biopower is vested, conceptually grounded in historical injustices as it is) altogether, imagining the life-giving inference of a commons form of governance onto the park space. Regardless, we envision the parks as places where diverse individuals and groups can come together, creating inclusive spaces that meet their needs and allow for mobilities that are fluid, shared, and secure.

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