-Your
Guide to the Cultural Impact of Emerging Technologies.
Eudoxa Comment August 2003
The Yard
Byline Anders Sandberg
Translation Lene Johansen
My yard has been turned into a labyrinth. It is hard to move around in, it is limiting and just a bit of a threat - but this is of course with the best intentions.
A yard has many functions, you should be able to walk across it, it is supposed to be a playground for the kids, and the tenants would like a nice park area. The problem is that it is hard to plan all of this into the yard from the beginning. People do not walk along the laid out paths, they will cross straight over the grass as a shortcut, and this will of course ruin the grass and create muddy paths. The sand in the sand box is not only a foundation, it is also something the kids will throw up into the air or even out of the sand box where it will run into the drain and clog it up, which in turn will create an unplanned play pond when it rains.
A while back the Authorities decided that enough was enough. If people don't know how to utilize their yard, they will be helped. Fences where put up along the paths so that people would stay on the path and not walk across the grass. Since they where supposed to have access to the grass for playing, picnicking or mowing there was an entrance, but only one. There will be no through fares. And since every grassy patch needed protection, fences where put up around all of them, along every sandbox, swing and path. The yard started to look like a labyrinth.
To ensure that the fence was stable and to avoid people sneaking through the spaces in-between the pickets, an extra board was put across the fence horizontally. After that somebody saw the immanent risk of a child being tempted to use the fence to balance on. Oh My! People might even use it to sit on. So a triangular shaped molding was added to the top of the fence so that nobody could sit comfortably on it or walk on them.
The result? -A yard that has become hard to cross as there are fences everywhere. Since many of the paths gets blocked by pools of water when it rains, and it is no longer possible to walk around them, you are forced to walk long detours to get across the yard. In the winter, piles of snow will block the entrance to this labyrinth.
When spring comes, the children will try to play in the yard. They will probably find their own uses for the fences, and that molding makes it so much more hard and dangerous to balance on top of it. Many of them will probably try the walk. The grass patch that they used as an improvised soccer field has been split in two. They will either have to go to the "real" soccer field; that is if the bigger kids will let them, or they will have to find their own. That would maybe end up being the parking lot.
It all started with the best of intentions, a more beautiful and safer yard was desired. But somehow it ended up being the other way around. The fence is in the way, it dominates the yard completely and gets in the way of the children's play and the adults attempts to walk across it. The only ones that appreciate this might be the grass patches. But the yard was not primarily meant for grass patches, but for the people. Rather than making the paths where people walk, people are being forced to walk where the paths have been created. When you try to force people to behave, rather than accommodating yards, schools or societies to their preferences, the results will often be wrong no matter how good the original intentions where.