Pawnee (Parks and Recreation)

Overview

Pawnee is depicted as a typical mid-sized Indiana city in the fictional "Wamapoke County" about 90 miles from Indianapolis. Dialogue from the show and other officially licensed material suggest a population in the range of 60,000 to a little over 80,000.

Pawnee's fictional history begins with its founding in 1817, which was very shortly followed by the driving of the Native American Wamapoke tribe from the land. The town is depicted as having an extensive history of abuses of the Wamapoke people.

Pawnee's twin town is Eagleton, Indiana, a smaller but wealthier adjacent community. Eagleton was founded by Pawnee's richest original settlers, who moved uphill shortly after Pawnee's establishment to found their own town. A mutual dislike between the communities has festered ever since. However, in "The Pawnee-Eagleton Tip Off Classic", due to an Eagleton budget crisis, the town is dissolved and incorporated into Pawnee.

Pawnee is noted as being in Indiana's 10th congressional district, which in reality has been obsolete since 2003.

The town is shown to have many flaws and problems, including a raccoon infestation and an obesity crisis, the latter being mainly the result of the town's major employer being a candy company called "Sweetums". The populace are generally unsophisticated but have a high degree of civic engagement. Over the course of the series, in part due to the actions of Leslie Knope and her associates, the town's fortunes improve and Pawnee becomes a more desirable place to live.

Government

Pawnee's government is set up like most local governments in the United States, with several departments, such as Parks and Recreation (the primary focus of the show), Sewage, etc., serving under a strong city council and a mostly ceremonial mayor, with a city manager running the town's day-to-day operations. From 2014 until his election to the United States House of Representatives in 2018, Ben Wyatt succeeded his former boss, Chris Traeger, as City Manager. The primary protagonist of the series is Leslie Knope, a former member of the City Council who was the deputy director of the Department of Parks and Recreation until she accepted a job as the Regional Director of the National Parks Service Midwest, at the end of season six.

Walter Gunderson became mayor of Pawnee in 1994, according to the book Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America, and held the office until his death in 2017. After an exhaustive search for an interim Mayor, Garry Gergich assumed the office and was then elected to 10 consecutive terms.

At the end of the second season, Pawnee had a serious budget crisis that eventually led to a temporary shutdown of the government. This storyline was inspired by the real-life global recession. The third season opened with the budget of every department being slashed.

Notable locations

Reception

The city of Pawnee has received critical acclaim. Several critics have noted that the city has become the show's secret weapon.

For example, Hillary Busis of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "the show wouldn't work nearly as well if it were set in a less wonderfully quirky place", and raved that "some of the show’s funniest moments come when the extreme weirdness of its setting is revealed — when, say, Leslie explains what’s going on in one of City Hall’s numerous, horrifically offensive murals, or when she dispatches ridiculous bits of Pawnee history. ('For a brief time in the ’70s, our town was taken over by a cult.') And then there’s how absurdly cosmopolitan Pawnee is: Why does this blip on the map have its own tabloid news show, zoo, beauty pageant, periodicals, and thriving nightlife scene? Pawnee is more than a setting — it’s a rich comic universe, like Springfield."

Production

Despite Pawnee's Indiana setting, the show was mostly filmed in Southern California. The exterior of the Pawnee government building, and several of the hallway scenes, were shot at Pasadena City Hall.

For the maps of Pawnee in the show, the producers have used slightly modified maps of Christchurch, New Zealand and Muncie, Indiana.

Merchandise

Since the series' premiere, NBC has sold merchandise for the town of Pawnee. Shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and other items were sold with the seal of Pawnee, as were shirts with Pawnee's slogan, "First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity".

In the episode "Born & Raised," Leslie writes a book about the town, titled Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. After the episode aired, NBC released an actual eponymous book, filled with information about the fictional town. The author is listed as Leslie Knope, although it was actually written by show writer Nate DiMeo. In 2012, it was nominated for the Thurber Prize for American Humor.