LOS ANGELES URBAN RANGERS
Between 2007 and 2012 I was a member of an artist collective called The Los Angeles Urban Rangers. Our group designs guided hikes throughout urban southern California while performing the role of the National Park Service Ranger. Our fundamental goal is to practice-perform what urban space in Los Angeles and other cities could be while teaching about the legal, political, and environmental issues of the sites where we are “posted.” After a critically lauded project called the Malibu Public Beach Safari, we implemented the second component of our Public Access 101 series with a program called Trailblazing Downtown Los Angeles. As with the Malibu Public Beach Safaris, the Downtown Los Angeles project aims to educate people on how to recognize and use public space in a part of the city where it is elusive, confusing, and is not equally accessible to all.
The core theoretical point of these projects is that access to public space is a requisite for building and maintaining safe and healthy urban communities. Interpreting contemporary urban landscapes in the American “wilderness” tradition allows us to point out and physically enact the absurdities of public access in light of the ecological as well as the urban development issues specific to those sites.
I am pleased to have co-authored with Emily Scott an article about the Urban Rangers that appeared in a 2012 issue of the journal Cultural Geographies.
And here is a National Public Radio report on the LAUR.
