Matt Hern

“That particular situation was problematic enough, but it is emblematic of much larger and more entrenched questions and conflicts around who speaks for parks, who speaks for land. The claim that parks should be accessible to “all” is a performatively liberal stance, one that undercuts any agonistic claims and becomes atheoretical and depolitical in the hands of state bureaucracies. All land is saturated with stories and histories, much of it beautiful and honourable, and some awful and violent. Claiming land to be “common” or to be commonly held does not wipe history clean. We live among the accumulating ruins of colonial rationalities, and stating that parks should “benefit all” willfully ignores history and obscures the highly political choices that are being made all around us. Any claim that parks are “open to all” is a naked lie — a lie that is designed to buttress colonial rationalities.”
― Matt Hern, On This Patch of Grass: City Parks on Occupied Land

“Parklands are often positioned as apolitical, as “common” or public land that somehow eludes examination amidst the grit of property markets and land-use battles, but it is critical to understand parks as a central feature of colonial land logics, as aggressively regulating and disciplining land and its occupations.”
― Matt Hern, On This Patch of Grass: City Parks on Occupied Land