The Contribution of Geographical Imagination in Structuring the Collective Unconscious
Land use planning involves a variety of economic, environmental and social factors based on both the material environment and the organizational and political structures of a society. Issues raised by every choice made about land use management and development go to the very heart of our value system, including our values about how place can evoke our sense of identity. While these are clearly concepts of a somewhat abstract nature, fundamental to issues of culture, aesthetics and ethics, they also merit close attention because they relate directly to how we perceive and represent territory, especially in terms of land occupied by people. Such perceptions and representations, though grounded in essentially concrete realities, remain for the most part the product of our imagination. Through reference to the current controversy around the future of Mount Orford National Park, and in particular to the response devised in answer to it by poet Alfred Desrochers, this article endeavours to illustrate how our geographical imagination structures our thinking about territory and land use planning, with an analysis of the symbolic and social identity function of the park, as reported in mainstream media by supporters and opponents of the proposed changes to its use.