Naturalized Area: Accidental Meadow
Installed across the road from the University of Windsor‘s Naturalized Area, our sign highlights one of the many wonderful accidental meadows, created by the ongoing city workers strike.
These naturalized areas allow for a moment in which one might be able to mistakenly believe that Windsor is a progressive city, a place where this type of naturalization is encouraged for its beauty, for its potential to attract wildlife, and for the stories our landscape is capable of telling.
With rumours circulating about a potential 30% of the newly naturalized areas across the city remaining in their naturalized states even after the strike is over, there is the potential for being able to believe that there is hope for Windsor.
Designed with the help of Steven and printed exceptionally fast at FastSigns, these signs will pop up over the coming days in other particularly wonderful locations most suitable for advocating the maintenance of their naturalized state.
![We spent last night watching a rough cut of some of Eric’s ongoing micro-residency project, did a lot of measuring, used Google Earth, did some math, drew some diagrams, and brainstormed a new project (because Cristina wants to sew, a lot). With the semester basically over now, we’re hoping to wrap up a couple things [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_6230-150x150.jpg "Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary")
![Monday night marked the last Broken City Lab meeting of the year!!! We’ll be taking a brief break over the holidays and then gearing up for a series of events starting at the end of January. For anyone who has been wondering how to get involved or if we’d ever hold open office hours again, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_72891-150x150.jpg "Last Meeting for 2009!")
![Sunday night was the first event of our Save the City project: Listen to the City, and it was incredible!!! We had an amazingly generous crowd of old friends and new faces come out to share their stories of Windsor with us and we recorded close to 8 hours of their hopes, concerns, and personal [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_9288-150x150.jpg "Listen to the City: Discovering the Histories of Windsor through Conversation")
![We’ve been working on paper planters for a while, but over the last couple of days I started experimenting with magnets as well. Ideally, these could work with having some rare earth magnets embedded in the paper. Still more research and development to be done, but I think it’s getting closer. The first step was [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_3950-150x150.jpg "Researching Planters")
![On Thursday night, on what was supposed to be a test run for projecting on the side of the Jackman Building (the new drama building at the University of Windsor), Broken City Lab ended up exploring a number of locations on campus armed with a projector, a laptop, and a really long extension cord. Originally, we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Broken-City-Lab-is-on-the-wall-of-the-new-drama-building-at-the-University-of-Windsor-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Oct 9, 2008")
![Here it is, or at least, here’s part of the physical archive, the scannable stuff anyways, from 2008-2009. It’s been hanging out in my filing cabinet for a long time, but finally with the help of Miranda Fay during her off-hours, it’s been gradually scanned in page by page. Archives are crucial for taking stock, for remembering, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2546-150x150.jpg "Keeping Track of the Archives")
![Last night, Hiba, Sara, and Justin tackled some initial planning for the installation of the CIVIC SPACE / Letter Library sign. The Letter Library idea came out of trying to think through how we might make our own sign for the space, so it’s really great to finally see the letters going up. Hiba got on the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9982-150x150.jpg "Installing the sign for CIVIC SPACE, take 1")
![We’re in North Bay for a residency in preparation of an upcoming exhibition. White Water Gallery is our gracious host (and for the first half of the day, our introduction to North Bay). Much of the day is on foot, with cameras. We record what we can about the city’s history and get a read [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wpid18855-MG_1327-150x150.jpg "Exploring North Bay (prep for Surviving North Bay)")
![Be it resolved that we’ll be a lot more active on here starting now. We’ve been overly involved in communicating on Google Wave while trying to keep our brains together for Save the City. With that project winding down, we’ll be shifting more of our research and communications back on here. We’ve missed it. And [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/howToPostOnBCL-sm-150x150.jpg "Expect More Activity + How Do You Collaborate Online?")
![Wednesday afternoon shifts into further work on testing the efficacy of the styrofoam letters being black. We’re trying to decide in anticipation of our Letter Library (A Collection of Alphabetic Interventions). Sara and Hiba painted. HELLO. Also, Kiki came by to help us paint the movable wall! And, Josh made these for a workshop [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9276-150x150.jpg "Designing & Prototyping tools for intervention: Letter Library + Gif Party")
![We’ve spent the last couple of weeks settling into our new headquarters, working on applications and ideas for the fall and winter. We’ve also cleared our consultancy out of the downtown space, seeing as Visual Fringe is over and it was high on the to-do list. Having a dedicated space has been incredible so far, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4539-150x150.jpg "The Last Couple Weeks at BCL HQ")
![We were only about half strong this week, but Josh, Rosina and I plowed ahead on the letters, this time focusing on just the front and back faces of the letters K, A, E, T, and I. We figured that since we had the projector set up anyways, it was worth doing as many faces as we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_2985-150x150.jpg "Cardboard Letters Continued")
![We met yesterday, but too much going on for any photos. I figure that our shared Dropbox folder says most of the important stuff anyways. We’re working towards completing our HFBC publication, which includes things like: posters of inventions on crossing an imagined border wall maps and 3D renderings of a cross-border portal system a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Screen-shot-2011-05-27-at-10.58.12-AM-150x150.png "Re: Collaborating on a big publication, Dropbox ftw")
![We spent Friday night in Hamilton at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series (organized by once-Windsorite, Andrew Lochhead). In a little less than two hours, we led a workshop and explosion of creativity with some amazingly great 13-year-olds. We made banners, two really great banners that will be [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5675-150x150.jpg "Making Banners at the Labour Lounge")
![Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF. In terms [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-06-at-9.15.16-AM-150x150.png "How to Forget the Border Completely, submitted for print!")
![I’ve been thinking about Windsor – Detroit tourism lately for our How to Forget the Border Completely project and since LivingSocial did such a good job advertising to me on facebook, I signed up for weekly Detroit deals and coupons to be e-mailed to me. I’m on week 3 or 4 and so far I’ve [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/michelledetroitdeal-150x150.jpg "Detroit Deals")
fantastic! there is no reason why a lot of these areas should be cut.
i love this idea! that sign is cute and official looking too. and obviously that meadow is amazing.
it’s nice that there are now places to go and lay in the tall grass and just feel nature (providing there’s no crazy striker booby traps inside).
before all of this, the only overgrown areas i saw were abandon lots that were dotted with old furniture and tires. it’s so refreshing to see REAL meadows instead.
people say that Windsor looks abandoned, but i think it looks rejuvenated (if you ignore all of the garbage, that is, lol).
According to this article that Leesa tweeted about earlier today, Don Sadler is committing to 100-200 acres remaining naturalized even after the strike is over. I’m curious about what constitutes a “signature park,” because I really think that it could much more interesting to keep some more visible places in this naturalized state.
I agree Sam, Windsor is starting to look rejuvenated.
are these signs still standing?
I don’t think any of them made it past the mowing. The one nearest to LeBel last the longest though. And we still have one left…
heyyyy wats up i think we should naturalize moe areas