Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
* * *
I was reminded of this all too pertinent poem by Robert Frost, first published in 1914, on two occasions recently.
The first time, a couple of months ago, was when I came across a newspaper headline that borrowed from the first line of Frost's poem. While plummeting me back to my high school English class, the article spoke about borders and fences as "the most visible remnants of the war on terror." Though such walls are actually pretty useless when it comes to preventing people from crossing borders (the article cites the idiom show me a 50 foot wall and I'll show you a 51 foot ladder), the power of such walls stems largely from their role as symbols of exclusionary policies.
With this article fresh in my mind, I was reminded of the poem a second time, though this time much closer to home - after the construction of a fence around a couple of the high rise apartment buildings that form part of the big social housing estate just next to our new home - les grandes ensembles (literally, 'big together').
For both residents and passers-by, there has never been any real distinction between these two buildings and the thirty or so other ones, spanning across a terrain measuring a kilometre or two - three stops exactly on the local bus route. The buildings have always been connected by interior paths for pedestrians and for over forty years, they were all part of les grandes ensembles. As the name emphasises, they were all together.
The fact that these two buildings happened to be owned by a different social housing company never really meant anything to anyone. Children and families visit their friends in those buildings just as they would any other.
So when the fence went up, no one really understood why. Was there a territorial war going on between the two companies? Did the company actually think that residents needed to be walled off for security reasons?
Most residents I spoke to were just kind of irritated. They weren't consulted in the construction of the fence and certainly didn't feel like it was protecting them from anything. It was just getting in the way. Kids would have to walk all the way around it to get from one place to another. Journeys to the train station each morning were extended. And when we were visiting neighbours in one of those buildings we found ourselves walking in circles just trying to find our way out afterwards.
Granted these few extra minutes may not seem such a burden in themselves. But as the article quoted at the beginning of this post notes, it's not just about practical inconvenience, but moreso about what this fence symbolises. A neighbourhood divided in two. A common space separated. The boundaries of neighbourhood and community defined by a corporation that doesn't have a sense of the lived reality of the place of those who actually use it. A decision about how to conceive of that place that completely neglects peoples' own visions of their neighbourhood.
Last week I learned that the practical inconvenience of fences matter too. As though orchestrated to illustrate the absurdity of this urban planning, as I was walking home from visiting a neighbour, I witnessed from a distance four ambulance officers, with their equipment, struggling to push open a part of the fence (which was kind of a makeshift gate wedged into the ground, without hinges - not really designed to be opened). A resident was trying to help pull it open from the other side. After a minute or so of effort they finally propped the thing open and ran up speedily into a building on the other side of that fence. The car park closest, where the ambulance was parked, potentially waiting to rush somebody to hospital, is in effect fenced off from the places where people live.
As the ambulance officers rushed past, an angry resident shouted that they should file a complaint against the company for putting up the fence in the first place, further illustrating the sense of imposition that has come along with the building of the fence.
So what was this company trying to wall in, or wall out?
Sadly it is not the only one of its kind. Fencing, walling and gating off these estates is happening all over our neighbourhood and throughout the region. Another social housing estate, which we would always cross through as a short cut to get to a neighbouring suburb, has also now been closed off. As well as putting up barriers between different members of the community, these fences are encroaching on what was once seen as public space. Common areas, frequented by local children and youth, much crossed by residents on their way to and from work, have now been fenced off. Outside of special zones, like public parks, all that is left are the footpaths.
Another family we know complained that the new fences put up outside the entrance to their home makes them feel like they're living in a prison.
Again, I couldn't help but wander: are they trying to wall people in or out? Like the article above so poignantly notes, such fences seem to reflect exclusionary policies more than they actually protect anybody.
I wrote recently that France seems to do a good job when it comes to designing public spaces. While this is true, I am coming to realise that such spaces are accepted if they can be confined and controlled. Parks can be monitored by officials and closed at night time (which they are). But places of residence are more difficult to control. The desire to put up fences signifies a desire to try and stop people from coming together, based on a fear of what such a meeting might produce. The assumptions lurking beneath this conception of city planning is that places of meeting shouldn't exist in public spaces because wherever anyone meets out in the open, dangerous things can happen. Instead, everyone should keep to their homes, the private realm. People from different buildings shouldn't cross paths. If their paths are parallel, then there should be a fence between them. And granted, sometimes there can be a basis for fear - sometimes in the dark hours of the night, there can be unwanted things taking place a little too close to home.
But are fences the solution? Those who want to will always find a 51 foot ladder and these planning decisions need to consider what such fences are really excluding, and whether it is wise to give that up. Things like chance meetings between neighbours that might have happened naturally on one's way home from work. Like seeds of friendship sown between children who see their neighbourhood as one large playground. Like a sense of community, both within and outside the home.
It's a sad, lonely world we are building then, all in the name of safety from some elusive threat. For all this planning reflects a reality that doesn't exist. 'Community' is invisible to this planning, which just sees buildings and routes. I don't think fences can actually stop community life, but they certainly don't promote it. And who knows whether with time these fences come to represent more than inconveniences but actually separate spaces, separate neighbourhoods, separate neighbours. Places where people no longer meet.
There needs to be a long and hard reflection then about the value of community life and meeting places in urban design. We need to ask ourselves what we are so afraid of, and to deal with it, instead of trying to cage off perceived problems. For we'll probably find that most of these very problems stem from the conceptions of community engrained within our policies, and not from communities themselves.
* * *
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.
