Artificiality of parkland

Green belts

Incidence

A contrast with the artificial division of land into economic or enjoyable is provided by residential forests of Japan, where a village grows up along the edge of a forest, the villagers tend and care for the forest, and the forest is available to anyone who wants to come and partake in the process. That this system is beneficial to the land, as well as to the villagers, is shown by the fact that these residential forests are still intact although they were established more than 300 years ago.

Claim

Parkland is artificial: parks and campgrounds conceived as 'pieces of nature' for people's recreation, without regard to the intrinsic value of the land itself, are dead and immoral. People should be allowed to picnic, play, boat, fish, etc. on farmland (provided that they respect the crops). The idea that farms are 'owned' by farmers for their exclusive profit is fallacious. If we continue to treat some land only as an instrument for our enjoyment, and other land as a source of economic profit, our parks and camps will become more artificial and plastic and our farms more and more like factories. All farms should be redefined as parks, where the public has a right to be, and all regional parks become working farms. A propos of these ideas, a Nigerian tribesman is also quoted as saying, 'I conceive that land belongs for use to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.