Canyon Frags and the City: The Nature of Nature in San Diego

"The eastward expansion of San Diego between 1900 and 1930 forced real estate speculators to contend with the area’s natural topography. Building inside canyons was neither safe nor financially feasible, so the grid pattern of development applied to the mesa top communities skipped over the canyons.  By keeping the canyons intact, pockets of open space were wrapped into the urban landscape of central San Diego.  More than eighty years have passed since the canyons and residential communities became intertwined, however, and conflicts exist between the two.  Conflicts between canyons and surrounding land uses are most evident in the “frags” which develop in the mouths of canyons.  Coined by Grady Clay, frags are fragments of space cause by errors in geographic design of cities.  The patches of undefined space between the built environment and open space canyons, referred to here as canyon frags, are the subject of this paper.  Canyon frags are the transitional spaces between residential neighborhoods and open space where no single land use is defined.  They are seen in the eye of the beholder: an informal pathway to one person; a future park to another; and a site for affordable housing to still another.  Some of the primary problems occurring at canyon frags are trash dumping and graffiti.  This paper explores the juxtaposition of canyon frags between rural and urban environments and the nature-culture hybridity they represent. This is the story of two canyon frags in San Diego." [Abstract from Conference Program and Book of Abstracts]

[Concurrent Session I-A: Defining the Interface]

[Presented at "Emerging Issues Along Urban/Rural Interfaces: Linking Science and Society", a conference held March 13-16, 2005 in Atlanta, GA (US)]