This essay explores the reconfiguration of urban nature in the American post-frontier era, highlighting its role as both a cultural and spatial construct within the framework of imperial politics. In the wake of the frontier’s closure, the United States reimagined its national landscape—not just through territorial expansion, but also through the symbolic reordering of urban natural spaces. By examining the spatial rhetoric of imperialism in the 1893 World Exposition and overseas expansion in the Philippines, the essay demonstrates how urban nature became a critical site for the naturalization of imperial authority. The spatial politics embedded in architectural landscapes and urban construction allowed the urban natural environment to function as both a vehicle for the redistribution of power and a new frontier within imperial discourses. This analysis reveals how cultural practices surrounding urban nature played a crucial role in consolidating power within the geopolitical and cultural landscape of the modern American empire.
AndersonB. (1988, May–June). Cacique democracy and the Philippines: Origins and dreams. New Left Review, 169, 3–31.
2.
AugustT. G. (1978). Colonial policy and propaganda: The popularization of the idée coloniale in France, 1919-1939 [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin].
3.
BagamaspadA.Hamada-PawidZ.BalangoyB. (1985). A peoples’ history of Benguet Province. Benguet Province.
4.
BarthesR. (1991). Mythologies. Noonday Press.
5.
BesantW. (1893). A first impression. Cosmopolitan Magazine, 15, 536–537.
6.
BeveridgeA. (1908). The meaning of the times, and other speeches. Bobbs-Merrill Company.
7.
BoyerM. (1983). Dreaming the rational city: The myth of American city planning. MIT Press.
8.
BrownJ. (1994). Contesting images: Photography and the world’s Columbian exposition. University of Arizona Press.
9.
BulosanC. (1946). America is in the heart: A personal history. University of Washington Press.
10.
BurnhamD. (1893, August). The organization of the world’s Columbian exposition. The Inland Architect and News Record, 22(1), 5–8.
11.
CampanellaT. (1981). City of the sun: A poetical dialogue (DonnoD. J., Trans.). University of California Press.
12.
CarpenterF. (1925). Through the Philippines and Hawaii. Doubleday, Page & Co.
13.
ChapmanG.JonsonB.MarstonJ. (1914). Eastward Ho. In ParrottT. M. (Ed.), The plays and poems of George Chapman (pp. 835–868). Routledge.
14.
The Columbian Gallery: A Portfolio of Photographs from the World’s Fair. (1894).
15.
CraigL. (1978). The federal presence: Architecture, politics and symbols in United States government building. MIT Press.
16.
CurroC. F. (1975). Shaping the future in the gilded age: A study of utopian thought, 1880-1900 [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin].
17.
Fourth Annual Report of the Philippine Commission. (1903). In Three Parts, Part 1. Government Printing Office.
18.
GilpinW. (1860). Central Gold Region: The Grain, Pastoral and Gold Regions of North America. Sower, Barnes & Co.
19.
GodleyM. R. (1978). China’s world fair of 1910: Lessons from a forgotten event. Modern Asian Studies, 12, 503–522.
20.
GoodeG. (1895). America’s relation to the advance of science. Science, 1(1), 4–9.
21.
GrusinR. (2004). Culture, technology, and the creation of America’s national parks. University of Chicago Press.
22.
HarveyD. (1982). The limits to capital. University of Chicago Press.
23.
HallP. (1988). Cities of tomorrow: An intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century. Blackwell Publishing.
24.
HirstP. (1993). Foucault and architecture. AA Files, 26, 52–60.
25.
JeffersonT. (1950). Letter to the Commissioners, 30 May 1800. In Paul CaemmererH. (Ed.), The Life of Pierre Charles L’Enfant (p. 398). National Republic Publishing Co.
26.
JeffersonT. (1970). L’Enfant to Jefferson, 26 February 1792. In KiteE. S. (Ed.), L’Enfant and Washington, 1791-1792 (p. 151). Johns Hopkins Press.
27.
KolodnyA. (1984). The land before her: Fantasy and experience of the American frontier, 1630–1860. The University of North Carolina Press.
28.
KramerP. A. (2006). The blood of government: Race, empire, the United States, and the Philippines. University of North Carolina Press.
29.
LaFeberW. (1963). The new empire: An interpretation of American expansion, 1860-1898. Cornell University Press.
30.
ManchandaN.TurnerO. (2024). From frontier-making to world-making: The enduring power of frontiers in south Asia. Political Geography, 113, 1–9.
31.
MandellR. D. (1967). Paris 1900. University of Toronto Press.
32.
MarxL. (1964). The machine in the garden: Technology and the pastoral ideal in America. Oxford University Press.
33.
MillerP. (1956). Errand into the wilderness. Harvard University Press.
34.
MorisonE. (Ed.). (1894). Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Vol. 1). Scribner and Sons.
35.
NashR. (1969). The cultural significance of the American wilderness. In McCloskeyM. E.GilliganJ. P. (Eds.), Wilderness and the quality of life (pp. 66–73). Sierra Club.
36.
NashR. (1976). The value of wilderness. Environmental Review, 1(3), 12–25.
37.
Nash SmithH. (1999). Virgin land: The American west as symbol and myth. Harvard University Press.
38.
NewtonN. T. (1971). Design on the land: The development of landscape architecture. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
39.
OlmstedF. (1893). Report From Landscape Department, 1893. Daniel Burnham Collection, Call No. 1943.1, Box 58, File 15. Burnham and Ryerson Library, Chicago Art Institute.
40.
PrenticeC. (2014). The lost tribe of Coney island: Headhunters, Luna park, and the man who pulled off the spectacle of the century. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
41.
RhodesR. (2004). John James Audubon: The making of an American. Alfred A. Knopf.
42.
RoemerK. M. (1976). The obsolete necessity: America in utopian writings, 1888-1900. Kent State University Press.
43.
RooseveltT. (1893). The wilderness hunter. Collier & Son.
44.
RooseveltT. (1926). The works of Theodore Roosevelt. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
45.
RooseveltT.GrinnellG. B. (Ed.). (1893). American big-game hunting: The book of the Boone and Crockett Club. David Douglas.
46.
RuskinJ. (1893). The poetry of architecture: Or the architecture of the nations of Europe considered in its association with natural scenery and national character. George Routledge and Son.
47.
RydellR. (2013). All the world’s a fair. University of Chicago Press.
48.
RykwertJ. (1893). On Adam’s house in paradise: The idea of the primitive hut in architectural history. MIT Press.
49.
SchneiderW. (1981). Colonies at the 1900 world’s fair. History Today, 31, 31–34.
50.
ScottJ. (2009). The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press.
51.
SilvermanD. L. (1978). The 1889 exhibition: The crisis of bourgeois individualism. Oppositions, 8, 71–91.
52.
SlotkinR. (1992). Gunfighter nation: The myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America. Harper Perennial.
53.
SmithN. (2004). American empire: Roosevelt’s geographer and the prelude to globalization. University of California Press.
54.
SpirnA. (1985). Urban nature and human design: Renewing the great tradition. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 5(1), 39–51.
55.
SulemanR.QayumB. (2017). Consciousness in conflict. In RajR.GriffinK. (Eds.), Conflicts, religion and culture in tourism (pp. 13–22). CABI.
56.
TapangB. (1985). Innovation and social change: The Ibaloy cattle enterprise in Benguet. Cordillera Studies Center.
57.
TrachtenbergA. (1982). The incorporation of America: Culture and society in the gilded age. Hill and Wang.
58.
TurnerF. (1994). Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The significance of the frontier in American history and other essays. Henry Holt.
59.
WalthewK. (1981). The British empire exhibition of 1924. History Today, 31, 34–39.
60.
WiebeR. H. (1967). The search for order 1877-1920. Hill and Wang.
61.
WoolleyM. (1913). Baguio, Simla of the Philippines. Overland Monthly, 62(3), 292–295.
