The Production of Public Space in a Small Canadian City: An Analysis of Spatial Practices in the Revitalizing of Galt Gardens

Abstract

This article critically assesses a series of spatial practices implicated in the spatial production of a revitalized public park in downtown Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. I find that the park’s revitalization tends to encourage short-term, recreational crowd practice. Specifically, I show how recent material improvements, such as the replacement of park benches and the addition of a plaza and water feature, distinguish between “positive” and “negative” users of the park. I begin the analysis by using Barthes’s influential work on signification to discuss four murals that came to frame the park’s most recent revitalization. Considered as “materials of myth,” I argue that these murals both commemorate and reproduce a depoliticized version of local history, one that relies on certain forgettings. I find that the widely celebrated revitalization of Galt Gardens hinges in part on practices of exclusion and racialization as forms of urban purification.