Sketching Culture, Sketching Nature: Uncovering Anchors of Everyday Nature for Urban Youth

There has, historically, been considerable uncertainty over the meaning of \u27urban nature\u27 and, therefore, the extent to which culture and nature are bound in the urban setting. We explore, in this paper, the spatiality of everyday nature as experienced by youth in an urban setting. To do so, we draw on the results of a participatory mapping activity that was designed to elicit information about where youth felt most connected to nature while in the city. Using sketch-map survey instruments, we collected hand-drawn responses from forty-three high school students in the downtown core of Tacoma, Washington. Data were digitized and analyzed in a GIS, and results were revealing of the contingency of the \u27nature\u27 concept in urban space as well as the centrality of \u27loose\u27 space to urban experiences that are evocative of being in nature