Place‐making in waterscapes: Wetlands as palimpsest spaces of recreation

Abstract

This paper argues that acknowledging the wide diversity of current recreational practices on English wetlands enables governance practitioners and site managers to appreciate the full extent of contemporary human engagements with these watery ecosystems. These insights can assist those tasked with managing wetland resources to develop more inclusive and sustainable development plans to support a wide range of actors whose connections to wetland spaces are important for their health, wellbeing and sense of self. Enabling sustainable future uses of wetlands will involve recognising and engaging with differential articulations of place‐making within these diverse waterscapes which themselves are in a constant state of transition. This calls our attention to the dynamic nature of wetlands, and the ways in which place‐making in these spaces shifts and adapts to the changing topography and biota within these waterscapes; each encounter with the space is slightly reconfigured and recast every time. Wetlands' liminality also extends to the diverse and often esoteric uses of these ecosystems for recreation in its most encompassing sense; as leisure spaces, places of renewal and as locations of place‐making practices. Drawing upon Barbara Bender's exploration of landscape as phenomenological palimpsest, this paper utilises empirical interview data drawn from a recent research project, ‘WetlandLIFE’, to explore how far contemporary human uses of wetlands engage with processes of restoration and reanimation. Making use of the different leisure narratives of the research participants across five English wetland sites, the paper explores the ways in which ‘place’ is differentially interpreted, enabled and enacted in these saturated spaces. These practises and performances can be functional, prosaic engagements with wetlands; painting, walking, photographing, sitting, reflecting. They can also be anarchic, counter‐cultural and ‘delinquent’; wild‐camping, raving, poaching, partying. The wide spectrum of behaviours and attitudes catalogued reveal the contested use and value of these waterscapes in contemporary contexts.

Geographies of inland waterscapes: Thinking with watery places

“…The wider practices and motivations of different individuals and community groups can therefore differ on the waterfront, and the everyday, small‐scale responses and reactions to the global challenges can sometimes be contradicting. They reflect the complicated and complex relationships, tensions, juxtapositions as well as conversations between place managers and local residents that take place in the waterscapes as is further highlighted by Gearey (2024). In her study on English wetlands, Gearey shows how fully understanding a very diverse range of recreational activities taking place in English wetlands—painting, walking, photographing, sitting and reflecting, and also wild‐camping, raving, poaching or partying—is crucial for governance officials and site managers.…”

“…This takes us to considering the temporal aspects of human interactions with water bodies as they can reveal intricate relationships between time and sociocultural practices. As highlighted by Mary Gearey, ‘our human relationships with wetlands, across time, reveal a very particular set of engagements with waterscapes that differ from other landscapes or spaces’ (2022, p. 2). Wantzen furthermore argues that the ‘rhythmic pattern is universal to any kind of aquatic ecosystem; however, there are characteristic types of rhythms for each type’ (2022, p. 3).…”

Pacemaking and placemaking on the UK canals

“…The ‘murky, more brown than blue’ canals embody ambiguous and ever‐changing relationships, with people finding them simultaneously ‘attractive and repellent, risky and relaxing’ (Pitt, 2018, p. 162). On the waterways, the various placemaking activities that include engaging with their ecological, historical, infrastructural – and temporal – properties have therefore created a hybrid watery counter‐spatiality (Gearey, 2024) ‘for citizens to use, claim, feel and consume in different ways’ (Wallace & Wright, 2022, p. 198).…”

Two Fountains and a Changing Waterscape in Rural Greece

“…Waterscape could be perceived as the space that involves the reciprocation between community and water within a particular social-ecological context. It is a space that evokes feelings of connectivity and emotional engagement [71]. It provides the setting in which individuals interact with, interpret, and make sense of their past and present experiences in a constantly shifting surrounding [72].…”