The Frontier Landscape

Nogales U.S-Mexico Border 2008 and 1898.posted here.

We can't talk about the American concept of space without talking about the symbolic landscape of the frontier. What is the frontier? It can be defined as both physical space and symbolic space.  Many colonial historians have romanticized the idea of the frontier in its power to define the American capacity for mobility and settlement. The myth, or romanticized version of the frontier portrays the Americas as a space rich with "free" land and resources, virtually unoccupied. Historian Fredrick Jackson Turner takes on this thesis. It is not just the expansive and free terrain, but the interaction of settlers with the "other". These interactions are symbolic boundaries that mare the frontier. Encounters consist of civilization with wilderness, settlers with the indigenous, that later grow into a space for cultural exchange and interaction mostly characterized by violence and the perception of danger.

The familiar story of the American pioneer in his individualistic exploratory pursuit stressed by other frontier theorists such as Walter Prescott Webb. Webb looks beyond the frontier as a space of mobility to say that it is also characterized by themes of individualism, innovation, democracy, and lawlessness. But who are the other actors in this tale? So far, these theorist gloss over the role of other players in the formation of the frontier (Native Americans, Mexicans, Spanish). There was also environmental destruction, disease, and massacre. These too played their part. Historian Herbert Bolton expands on the frontier thesis with his assertion, "Who has tried to state the significance of the frontier in terms of the Americas?" (52)

Bolton begins to give us a more complex picture by focusing on the way people were using space in the west before colonization (non-traditional farming, construction of missions, etc). This was just as important as the march west to the frontier. In Bolton's frontier thesis, he rejects Turner and Webb's focus on unity, freedom and democracy. "In the revolt of the colonies the people were far from unanimous. Only thirteen of the [30] provinces joined, though appeals were made to all..Even in the thirteen, a third of the people were opposed to the revolution" (22).  We were not, after all, a unified culture built on sameness. And so, it is in the uncoordinated acts of many including the "other" along with bureaucratic, governmental influences that formed the frontier and in turn, the "American ideology of space".

Where are these frontiers now? Both Turner and Bolton talk about borders as space of interest.  Today's borderland zones are just as much a space of contestation as ever.  Along with still being characterized as spaces of violence, they are sites of production and cultural development. Culture is not something bounded by physical borders. We can see in the US/Mexican border where housing and landscapes look similar on both sides. Even language is shared regardless of physical barriers. It would seem that new space is created here. How can we take the creativity of these spaces and apply it in practice? This takes me back to where I was getting at the end of my original post.  As landscape architects and designers of spaces, we too only design with Olmsted's Eurocentric approach in mind. The clash of cultures formed at borders has the potential for the formation of a new approach. One that has roots in Eurocentric themes but is more representative of the concept of space in the Americas.