THE IMAGING OF LANDSCAPE
Š 2020 Marco Rangel
THE IMAGING OF LANDSCAPE LAND DEVELOPMENT + DESIGN IN THE MAGIC VALLEY OF THE RIO GRANDE
A Design Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Landscape Architecture by Marco Rangel December 2020 Committee Chair - Jennifer Birkeland
27 - MAGIC VALLEY; WHERE THE RIVER MEETS THE SEA
ABOUT Marco Rangel is from McAllen, Texas and holds an undergraduate degree in urban design from Parsons The New School. Before entering the graduate program in landscape architecture at Cornell University, Marco worked as an interpretive naturalist for several years where he developed a profound connection to landscape through environmental education and many memorable birding excursions along the lower Rio Grande.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am forever grateful for the many people that have played a role in shaping my curiosity, perspective and passion for this project. Thank you to my advisor, Jennifer Birkeland, who has not only guided me but been a major pillar of support, offering both a keen, creative eye and many words of wisdom and encouragement. To the Cornell faculty in Landscape Architecture who contributed to my design ethos and training- Valerie Aymer, Tim Baird, Nina Bassuk, Josh Cerra, Kathyrn Gleason, Maria Goula, Martin Hogue, Zaneta Hong, Zach Rood, Duarte Santo, Jamie Vanucchi, Anne Weber, and Ryan Wright. My future in landscape architecture is brighter because of you. Thank you to Christy Ten Eyck for adding an invaluable touch of warmth and wisdom to my journey as a designer. Thank you to Jeremy Foster, Maggie Hansen, James Rojas, and Stephanie Saulmon for taking the time to provide sound feedback at a pivotal junction. Your critical and insightful perspectives offered new parameters where they did not previously exist. Lastly, thank you to my closest network of friends, colleagues, and family for both contributing to and ultimately valuing the soul behind my strum. You have listened to countless hours turned into days of my obsession for all things ‘Valley’. You all motivate me to reach for the highest realms of enlightenment. Thank you for always being down for the ride.
ABSTRACT The Imaging of Landscape fosters a resolution of space, place and performance that choreographs both environmental function and cultural perception. The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, a sort of terra incognita for the contemporary disciplines of landscape architecture and urbanism, serves as a critical site of inquiry to explore how design can hack this resolution. Furthermore, the agency of image in altering the material transformation of landscape through design has implications for broader land-site development strategies in landscape architecture. The Lower Rio Grande Valley, also known as “the Valley� in its regional vernacular, sits at the southernmost tip of Texas, along the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. The rio, Spanish for river, serves as the line of demarcation- a form of gateway between the Americas. Scorned, drained and largely invisible for most of the people who call its delta home, the rio is nonetheless responsible for fostering a rich story, filled with biological splendor and cultural bounty.
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CONTENTS ABSTRACT 6 PART II LAND DEVELOPMENT + BOOSTERISM 8 BOOSTERISM PART II ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT 38 CONTEXT PART III RE-IMAGING THE MAGIC VALLEY 64 REFLECTIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY
RESEARCH METHODS artifact narrative literature scholarly article participatory design
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PART I
LAND DEVELOPMENT + BOOSTERISM +COAHUILTECAN TERRITORY +NUEVO SANTANDER +TAMAULIPAS +REPUBLIC OF TEXAS +REPUBLIC OF THE RIO GRANDE +UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +THE MAGIC VALLEY +EL VALLE +956 artifact narrative literature scholarly article
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pre-1746 1746-1821 1821-1836 1836-1848 1840 1848-present
RIO GRANDE VALLEY
NATIONAL
REGIONAL
The inquiry moves between four different scales to gain and establish a critical resolution of the site: from continental to the Public Land Survey System’s Quarter Quarter Section (40 acres).
COMMUNITY
QUARTER-QUARTER SECTION - PLSS
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COAHUILTECANS + RIO DE LAS PALMAS The earliest imaging of the Lower Rio Grande Valley occurred in the mid-18th century with the colonization of the land by Spaniards, led by Jose de Escandon in 1747. Cartographic scenes depict a terrain dotted by waterways and wetlands along the coast. Authors of these early maps were sure to also include depictions of the indigenous people they encountered, known as Coahuiltecans, who were not an organized tribe so much as groups of nomadic communities that would traverse the wild landscape as the seasons provided parameters for. The Spaniards in the area described encountering a Rio de las Palmas, or “River of Palms�, that extended over one hundred kilometers into the land from what is now known as the Gulf of Mexico. These explorers were able to navigate the mighty river using water-based vessels, discovering that the seemingly unforgiving patches of thicket could be suitable for settlement, and in particular, the raising of livestock. While other areas of New Spain were settled up to a few hundred years before this time period, colonists based further south in the interior of what is now central Mexico were motivated by the need to reinforce their northern territories due to the gradual movement of other European colonists in the far north and east.
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1747 - SENO MEXICANO EXPLORATION DATA SOURCE - DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION
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12 1792 - NUEVO SANTANDER DATA SOURCE - DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION
1811 - NUEVO SANTANDER DATA SOURCE - DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION
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SPANISH PORCIONES 1769
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NUEVO SANTANDER 1746 - 1821 In regard to land development in the newly settled state of New Spain called Nuevo Santander, land parcels were granted to colonists by the King of Spain according to a relationship with the river. These units were called porciones and had a linear form due to the fact that each grantee was given access to a piece of the riverfront. In this way, the parcels were narrow and long, extending for several miles into the land on either side of the river. The densest clusters of porciones occurred well away from the river mouth due to the extensive wetland systems that occupied the coastal region. During this period of time, town sites were very small and largely cutoff from other more populated settlements to the north and the south. This was due to the fact that it was difficult to navigate the dense vegetation that extended on all sides of the area. Therefore, the first network of cattle-ranching communities were very rural throughout Spanish rule, which ended firstly with the Mexican Revolution in 1821, and another subsequent political shift with the Texas Revolution a little over ten years later in 1836.
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16 1836 - REPUBLIC OF TEXAS DATA SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
1839 - DISPUTED TERRITORY DATA SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
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18 1849 - TEXAS NEWLY JOINED WITH U.S. DATA SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA LIBRARY
REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 1836 - 1848 Having first changed names from Nuevo Santander to Tamaulipas under Mexican rule, the area occupied heavily disputed territory throughout the decade after Texas’ revolution from Mexico. The area was still largely inhabited by descendants of the Spanish cattle ranchers, who left most of the vegetation intact for the raising of livestock; however, Anglo northerners in Texas began to migrate into the region as conflicts arose with Mexico regarding the annexation of Texas to the United States. This was due to the fact that as Texas gained independence in 1836, Mexico believed the established border to be a river a few hours to the north whereas Texans were under the impression that the Rio Grande was the true border. After tension over this boundary culminated in the U.S.-Mexican War of 18461848, the Lower Rio Grande Valley finally became the southernmost frontier of the newly acquired American state of Texas, which led to new waves of immigration comprised of Americans in large part as a result of federal troops having been stationed there throughout the war.
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BOOSTERISM Further into the settlement of the area by American Anglos in the latter half of the 19th century, the first major technological shift came to the Valley in the form of the railroad in 1904. Print advertising and railway tourism became a leading source of the second wave of imaging in the area, heralded by a combination of railroad empires, newly established chambers of commerce, and land development companies.
20 DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
A faction of business-savvy settlers learned that the area was filled with rich alluvial soil, deciding to capitalize on that by coining the term ‘Magic Valley’ to promote land development in the region.
DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
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The rail and introduced irrigation technologies began to dramatically transform the material landscape, primarily through the production of agriculture. The formula to the Magic Valley was described as being comprised of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Fertile soil Inexhaustible water and ditches A twelve month growing season Cheap labor Transportation
A segregated border society was comprised of Mexican descendants and Anglos who hailed from Midwestern states and perceived of Mexicans as being passive in the landscape, and therefore easily put to work after losing much of their inherited lands as a consequence of periodic threats and maneuvers brought to them by the Anglo immigrants with growing political clout.
22 DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
SHARYLAND BOOSTERISM
DATA SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
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PUBLIC LAND SURVEY SYSTEM HYBRID
By this point in time, the land parcel layout in the region was a hybridized version of America’s Public Land Survey System and the Spanish porciones. This division of land when juxtaposed with an aerial image begins to frame land-uses across the geographic terrain.
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The booster era of railway promotion extended across the American Southwest, eventually making its way to Los Angeles, California which stands as a compelling comparison to the Valley due to its history of Spanish colonization and similar site conditions.
RAILROADS WESTERN GRADIENT
CENTRAL GRADIENT
EASTERN GRADIENT
ATCHISON TOPEKA SANTE FE RAILWAY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
ST LOUIS BROWNSVILLE MEXICO RAILWAY BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS
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CURT TEICH 1931-1950
LINEN PAPER - EMBOSSED
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COLOR CHART - C.T. “ART-COLORTONE”
CURT TEICH + THE IMAGING OF A NATION In addition to the railways transporting people across the country, they also disseminated droves of touristic media in the form of postcards, which worked to not only attract new visitors and express the experiences their senders were privy to during travel, but to establish identities of place. While not exclusively boosters, these printmaking enterprises can be seen as responsible for the depiction of, and therefore perception of landscapes. A particularly notable maker of postcards was Curt Teich & Company Inc., of Chicago, Illinois. The company employed hundreds of traveling salesmen, who sold picture postcards to domestic residences, and encouraged business to create advertising postcards. These salesmen also photographed the businesses and worked with owners to create an idealized image. In many cases, the production of these images was highly curated by graphic artists who also operated under the company’s wings. Similar in fashion to the way that contemporary designers use digital software to edit visual content, this method of imaging sought to embellish the backdrop of various settings. The usage of linen material and highly saturated inks for printing gave the postcards an artistic quality that made them appear as miniature paintings.
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PLACE MYTHS
Upon comparing postcards produced for the Valley with Southern California, a heavy emphasis on featuring botanical elements in the landscape is apparent. In this case, the usage of exotic palms and other tropical foliage optimizes the allure of these areas. Vibrant colors are mixed in with perspective views to draw viewers into the scene.
28 DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
Postcard captions and hand-written anecdotes often further exaggerated the scenes being depicted. A type of written and visual propaganda, the combined text and imaging became a way of creating place myths, which are how sights associated with a location gain traction in the public consciousness.
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PEOPLE OF THE VALLEY
Postcards also depicted the inhabitants of the area, with certain biases and particularities. In the Valley, Hispanic people were shown as having a specific type of relationship with the rural landscape- one that was agrarian and humble in character.
30 DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
The postcard featuring workers in the field has a caption that states: “Scenes like the one featured are frequent throughout the Valley. There is an abundant supply of native labor, Mexican in descent, which has been proved by experience to be quick to learn hand skills, industrious, and home-loving by nature.�
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PEOPLE OF THE VALLEY
In stark contrast, postcards depicting the Anglo population in the Valley tended to promote a relationship to landscape that was more indicative of the conquering and fetishization of nature. This imaging continued to carry forth into new generations of printmaking that eventually began to convey a more urban, or suburban, condition in the region.
32 DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
The postcard featuring workers and a farm owner in an orchard states: “Picking grapefruit in a 7 year old grove that has produced as high as $1,500.00 an acre on one crop of fruit.� This caption highlights the sense of economic vitality that was crucial to the imaging in the booster era due to its ability to draw in more investment opportunities from new settlers.
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As the decades continued to roll into the second half of the 20th century, the continued emphasis on exotic botanical romance established a strong footing in the Valley, carrying forth a designed landscape vernacular into subsequent years.
34 DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
The collective product of intensive marketing through railroad magazines and postcards depicting the so-called Magic Valley created an imaginary for the people that evolved over the generations to become an illusion of nature.
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Much of the Valley’s modern settings reinforce the illusory effect that early imaging fostered, retaining the character and material elements of the booster era postcard, which by now had combined with the structural components of urbanization.
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By the year 2020, urbanized sites of the region have sprawled across the land, dominated by automobile-oriented development riddled with highways, strip malls, and suburban communities. However, a shrinking rural area remains comprised of agriculture and natural lands.
URBAN AERIAL 2020
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PART II
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT +BIOME +ECOREGION +CLIMATE +HYDROLOGY +PHYSIOGRAPHY +PLANT COMMUNITIES +MATERIALIZING THE MAGIC VALLEY +ECOLOGIES OF EMPATHY
artifact narrative literature scholarly article
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In order to better understand how the imaging of place through land development and touristic promotion had an effect on the material landscape, it is important to take a look at the context of its natural systems.
DATA SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
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40 DATA SOURCE - REPASCH, 2017
RIVERS + STREAMS
The Valley’s namesake winds its way from its headwaters in Colorado, through New Mexico and Texas, eventually emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Historic imaging of the river tended to volly between pastoral and industrial scenes. Postcards dedicated to the Lower Rio Grande were careful to not convey the turbulent nature of its occasional, yet mighty floods.
RIO GRANDE
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RIVERS + STREAMS
The last stretch of river along the Valley’s four county jurisdiction is an alluvial floodplain, which is a largely flat landform created by the deposition of rich sediment by the river and its tributaries over a long period of time. At the river’s mouth, the water loses its force and drops all its sediment wherein a delta is formed.
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Part of the place myth in the Magic Valley nomenclature is that the region is not a true valley at all. It is not difficult to deny that promoting a floodplain as the ‘Magic Delta’ certainly would not have had the same appeal during the booster era; however, distinguishing between geographic truth is deserving of critical analysis and reflection.
1911 - TOPOGRAPHIC MAP OF THE RIO GRANDE SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
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44 1911 - SHEETS 12 + 13 SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
1914 - TOPOGRAPHIC MAP OF MISSION, TEXAS SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
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46 1937 - IRRIGATION DISTRICTS SOURCE - PERRY CASTANEDA MAP COLLECTION
CONCRETE CANAL “Canals like the one pictured carry water from the Rio Grande to citrus orchards in the Valley. Over 50,000 tourists visit this territory annually to enjoy the advantage of one of America’s finest orange and grapefruit lands.” The introduction of irrigation technology in the Valley contributed to the dramatic transformation of the original cattle-ranching landscape that had been replaced with thousands of acres of farmland. Gravity-based irrigation in the form of raised canals relied on the subtle topographic shifts away from the river to distribute water to crops. The imaging of this as seen in the postcard above is highly illustrative, depicting bucolic scenes lined with more exotic vegetation. There is a unique poetry to the way that the river’s water was being brought into the land and lined with palms, much like the Spanish explorers had encountered along the precolonial riparian zone.
SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
EARTHEN CANAL
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CLIMATE IN THE VALLEY The climatic conditions in the Valley deeply influence the type of vegetation, both native, introduced and cultivated, that can thrive for sustained periods of time in the region. The convergence of several climate types including temperate. sub-tropical, and semi-arid zones fosters a unique set of atmospheric conditions for both people and wildlife to exist within. Extreme heat during the era of the Anthropocene has become the norm in modern times due to a changing climate. Additionally, rapid urbanization and associated heat island effect exacerbates the effects of climate change’s wrath as a result of the booster era’s initial replacement of native vegetation with flat fields for farming that made for easy land development once population growth expanded into the Valley’s urban-rural peripheries.
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URBAN HEAT INDEX -0.5 C 0 C 1.0 C 2.0 C 3.0 C TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN URBAN AND VEGETATED LAND DUE TO IMPERVIOUS SURFACE AREA
RIO GRANDE VALLEY
DATA SOURCE - EARTH ENGINE APPS
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BIOME + ECOREGION Combined with climate, ecology is a major factor in rethinking the imaging of place. The Valley is a part of the Tamaulipan Mezquital ecoregion, as classified by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which is one of several ecoregions within the larger Deserts and Xeric Shrublands biome. Much of the native vegetation is colloquially described as thornscrub, thornforest, chaparral or monte in Spanish, and is comprised of dense strands of plant material that naturally occurs on either side of the lower Rio Grande. The first wave of clearing and conversion of this landscape type for agriculture in the early twentieth century had the greatest impact on altering the patterns and processes of its existence in south Texas and northeastern Mexico. Unsurprisingly, only small and highly fragmented patches of the original landscape remain, with a WWF designation of critical/endangered. Remnant tracts of thornscrub tend to occur either along the riparian zone, the coast and northern ranchlands away from urbanized areas. While the ecoregion as a whole occurs beyond at least three sides of the region, there is statistically less than 3% left of these natural lands that remain within the Valley’s actual political boundaries.
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ECOREGIONS SOUTHEASTERN CONIFER FORESTS SIERRA MADRE ORIENTAL PINE OAK FORESTS EASTERN GREAT LAKES LOWLAND FORESTS SOUTHEASTERN MIXED FORESTS UPPER MIDWEST FOREST SAVANNAH TRANSITION WESTERN GULF COASTAL GRASSLANDS CENTRAL + SOUTHERN MIXED GRASSLANDS CALIFORNIA COASTAL SAGE + CHAPARRAL GREAT BASIN SHRUB STEPPE MOJAVE DESERT CHIHUAHUAN DESERT TAMAULIPAN MEZQUITAL
DATA SOURCE - WORLD WILDLIFE FUND
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PALMAR
CHAPARRAL
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HUISACHAL
MEZQUITAL-SACATAL
RETAMAL
CENIZOSA
DATA SOURCE - CLOVER, 1937
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PHYSIOGRAPHIC ZONES SAND SHEET
AGUILARES PLAIN BORDAS CUESTA
BARRIER ISLAND
UPPER VALLEY FLOODPLAIN
YTURRIA TRANSECT
The Valley’s portion of the ecoregion boasts an array of plant communities indicative of the varying soils across the area that occur in distinct physiographic zones. Only the Rio Grande Delta zone represents the conditions most attributed to the river’s alluvial floodplain. A recent field study compared eight plant communities in order to establish further criteria for distinguishing vegetation types.
54 DATA SOURCE - LESLIE, 2016
RIO GRANDE DELTA
Four 50 x 10 meter belt-transects were established at each site, and woody plants taller than 1 meter were recorded to determine species frequency, density, stratification and dominance. Referring to this type of spatial composition of species lends itself to the reorientation of imaging that pertains to native vegetation.
LA POSADA TRANSECT
IMAGING THE TRANSECT
DATA SOURCE - FLORES, 2019
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IMAGING OF NATIVE VEGETATION The usage of specific botanical tactics during the booster era, namely the importation of exotic plants in need of precious resources to thrive, outlined the way in which landscape perception in the Valley could pollute a collective understanding of the immense value that native plants have in a place. While the age-old ‘native vs exotic’ argument pertaining to plants is not the primary lens in which to frame this exploration, it is worth noting that this debate is relevant to the profound impact on the quality of an ecologically-sound landscape. However, when considering the methodology toward native plants of notable landscape architect, Jens Jensen, it has been argued that place is still an important force in human life; yet not a single-factor, mechanistic construct like environmental determinism. Place is multifaceted, dynamic, and it changes with time. The suggestion has been made that perhaps there are no problems with three visions of nature and gardening--garden as natural history, garden as natural cornucopia, and garden as natural geometry, and that for landscape architects concerned with placemaking, there needs to be a recognition of the dynamics of both the natural and cultural systems of people and find ways to bring them into designs. Nonetheless, there is empirical evidence to suggest that the power of constructing an image or idea of landscape through the marketing of place was critical to the collective perception, as well as misconception, of native plants in the Valley.
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Historic imaging of natural habitat in the Valley was rare and often biased toward the one native palm species, Sabal mexicana, which is slow-growing and thus not as often incorporated into the designed landscape like the stately Mexican Fan Palm, Washingtonia robusta.
SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
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HONEY MESQUITE
TEXAS PRICKLY PEAR
CITRUS
TEXAS EBONY
MEXICAN FAN PALM
ANACUA
BOTANICAL IDENTITIES Despite the heavily altered natural landscape in the Valley, there is a growing movement of local pride associated with its uncommonly encountered, yet profound qualities. In an effort to begin providing agency to a plant palette of the future that draws upon imaging tactics, one can consider a selection of species that are both culturally and ecologically native to the area in order to establish criteria for a system of value metrics. The intermixing of species with properties that have the ability to provide aesthetic and ecological value is essential to the imaging needed for generating a paradigm shift in the psychic landscape of the Valley’s inhabitants and visitors. The material enchantment of plant matter can go beyond captivating those who bear witness to it by adding gusto to design thinking that positions plants at the forefront of a contemporary boosterism while inverting the hierarchy of landscape’s role in new development.
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HONEY MESQUITE
TEXAS PRICKLY PEAR
CITRUS
TEXAS EBONY
MEXICAN FAN PALM
ANACUA
HONEY MESQUITE
TEXAS PRICKLY PEAR
CITRUS
TEXAS EBONY
MEXICAN FAN PALM
ANACUA
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HONEY MESQUITE
TEXAS PRICKLY PEAR
CITRUS
TEXAS EBONY
MEXICAN FAN PALM
ANACUA
TEXAS PRICKLY PEAR
COCHINEAL
CARMINE DYE WITH COTTON FABRIC
The Texas Prickly Pear provokes a connection to imaging through its association with cochineal, an insect-produced natural dye used in North America in the 15th century for coloring fabrics due to its color being highly valued as a symbol of royalty and authority in New Spain. After synthetic pigments and dyes were invented in the late 19th century, natural-dye production gradually diminished. Health fears over artificial food additives, however, have renewed the popularity of cochineal dyes, and the increased demand has made cultivation of the insect profitable again. In this light, one sees the multi-value context of plants as an indication of a strengthening botanical legacy in the Valley that design can surely take cues from.
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PART III RE-IMAGING THE MAGIC VALLEY +RESOLUTION OF LANDSCAPE +PIXEL LAND USE TYPOLOGIES
narrative literature scholarly article participatory design
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SOURCE - PERSONAL ARCHIVE
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SHARYLAND WORKSHOP 2020
66 SOURCE - KILLAM DEVELOPMENT, LTD.
SITE FOR EXPERIMENTATION In January 2020, a land developer known as Killam Development invited citizens of the Valley to attend a series of public meetings that would contribute to the participatory design of newly acquired territory in Mission, Texas. Throughout the week-long series of design workshops and charrettes, various focus groups were centered around topics such as housing, arts & culture, health & wellness, mobility, border relations, and the environment & green space. I was fortunate enough to attend several breakout sessions, which would become a type of research method that provided enough criteria to realize that the site slated for proposal was an ideal simulation for the testing of design concepts and scenarios. This realization was largely due to the fact that much of the imagery and associated vision boards that were being driven by design consultants in response to the public’s feedback, seemed to follow a similar pattern of development in the Valley that could optimize its response to powerful latent identities in the landscapetracts of native vegetation, irrigation canals, and agricultural parcels. Despite the fact that there was a contemporary endeavor to prioritize walkability and green space, I left wondering how principles of landscape architecture and urbanism could hack the resolution of the image that was created for the Magic Valley’s landscape, one that did not solely capitalize on the expression of a tropical oasis that is limiting in its cultural and environmental scope of potential.
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68 SOURCE - RHODES ENTERPRISES
URBAN SPRAWL 2020
Other recently developed communities nearby to this site have demonstrated a type of suburban sprawl that is over-saturated across the United States, provoking the need for a new calibration of booster era strategies that realign landscape priorities to enable more innovative and soulful approaches to place-making in an environmental context.
By looking into a segment and associated adjacencies of Killam’s proposed development and deriving a system of land parcel typologies for reading its condition through the lens of the PLSS quarter-quarter section (40 acres), new inferences were established regarding the re-imaging of its future.
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TYP 4
TYP 1
TYP 2
TYP 3
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LAWN + EXOTIC PLANTINGS DIGITIZATION OF STRUCTURAL FORM
TYP 1
IMAGING IN DESIGN PROCESS
Adding to the processes of land parceling and printmaking as a suite of imaging, remote sensing and digital modeling have become key tools that contemporary designers wield in both site analysis and the manifestation of drawing sets.
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AUTOMOBILE-DOMINANT LAYOUT POOR PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION FALLOW LAND
TYP 2
FALSE PLAZA - COMMERCIAL STRIP MALL
In the case of one land-use typology, the traditional plaza, which is historically meant to serve as a gathering space, it actually occurs in the form of a strip mall with an automobile-driven layout. This urban condition leaves little to no room for actual social engagement in the community outside of a traditional city park, or the highly privatized nature of suburban backyards.
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FALLOW LAND
DRAINAGE DITCH
TYP 3
OLD MILITARY ROAD
Irrigation ditches and canals weave through remnant agricultural parcels, both active and fallow, but lack any form of access due to private ownership. Some foster opportunistic vegetation, while others are heavily maintained.
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ABANDONED EARTHEN CANAL
MEZQUITAL ZACATAL
TYP 4
FRAGMENTED PATCH
Fragmented tracts of natural land occur in the community and are unwelcoming due to being perceived as unkept, inaccessible, and left abandoned by property owners.
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LAND USE TYPOLOGIES Upon extending the cartography of the studied typologies into the larger, yet still immediate context of the land parcel grid, an amalgamation of similar land-use types was conceived, depicting a complex network of material occupancies and public works infrastructure. The analysis illustrates how the current state of agricultural land acts as a buffer between patchy natural areas and the existing, lawn-centric residential and commercial fabric. Rather than use the quarter-quarter section grid as a means to draw linear separation of space, it instead serves as a tool for providing measurement potential to an otherwise amorphous set of site conditions that are attributed to urban sprawl. This is especially useful in the rural-urban periphery because it acts as an invisible connector between the many pixel-like arrangements that land parcels have in relation to one another.
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KEY INFRASTRUCTURE + PUBLIC LAND An intricate system of irrigation canals connected to the river and ditches for collecting stormwater and agricultural runoff, snakes its way through the site, serving as a reminder of how much of a story on water can be told through careful consideration of its performative value. This condition acts as one of the sole connectors between the current residential zone and the outlying agricultural parcels slated for urban expansion. Mapping city-owned land against the categorical land-use typologies indicated a combination of public space that was either actively used or left undeveloped and inaccessible. This presents areas of opportunity regarding public vs. private land that can influence key design decisions that blur the resolution of these spaces through remote sensing, as well as in the perspectives of people on the ground.
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RE-IMAGING URBAN FORM PLSS
GEOGRAPHIC GRADIENT
CURT TEICH
A design driver formed by weaving research and site analysis together into a conceptual schematic that draws from the influences of remote sensing, printmaking, land-parceling, and picture-element (pixel) based drawing. The booster era constructed limits to the way people could perceive and ultimately identify with landscape in the Valley, furthering an idea or image produced by early developers that continues to impact the structuring of ongoing urban growth.
This design proposal seeks to iterate the image of landscape by employing an intersectional trinity of infrastructures (vegetative; waterways; social gathering spaces) that allow new residential and commercial development to organize at the peri-urban fringes of the Valley’s sprawling corridor. Using vegetation as a primary actor and structuring agent, this new form of urbanism arises from the multiplicity of histories across the site, as well as its imagined futures.
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In a concerted effort to establish design hierarchy that prioritizes landscape for the existing and future residents of the community, as well as endangered natural habitat, a codification system of various land-use types and site elements was derived along a series of transects through space and time to reveal opportunities for the emergence of new urban form. Ag - AGRICULTURE CAg - COMMUNITY AGRICULTURE C - CAR LINE FOR INTL CROSSING F - FALLOW LAND FW - FLOODWAY G - GREENWAY
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IB - INTL BORDER CROSSING NP - NATIVE PLANT CROPS R - RESIDENTIAL FABRIC RI - RIO GRANDE SC - SHOPPING CENTER V - VEGETATION
2041
2020
2002
1982
1963
1914
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1914
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JACAL COMMUNITY
TAMAULIPAN MEZQUITAL
RESACA
CATTLE GRAZING
1914 The earliest transect using accessible data at a scale refined enough to foster the appropriate resolution of site revealed a combination of agrarian settlement, a variation of oxbow lake colloquially known as a resaca, parcels of land for cattle grazing, and extensive swaths of native vegetation. The black and white composition of the site plan is meant to act as a type of empty canvas in which the imaging of landscape can start to accumulate through the usage of colors referenced from the Curt Teich Art-Colortone chart in historic postcard printmaking.
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1963
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JACAL COMMUNITY
AGRICULTURAL FIELDS
TAMAULIPAN MEZQUITAL
RESACA
CATTLE GRAZING
IRRIGATION CANAL
1963 Within fifty years, the booster era of the Valley had already restructured much of the site’s material landscape with the incorporation of a newly-dominant agricultural fabric. An irrigation canal was now in active use to distribute water to crops, initiating the first human-led movement of the Rio Grande’s natural gifts into the site. The resaca was integrated into a larger system of drainage that would serve as a model for the manner in which similar waterways could be used to absorb excess stormwater. The former cattle grazing community on site disappeared along with much of the native vegetation except for a sizable riparian tract and a few isolated patches to the north of the cropland mosaic. Despite the absence or relocation of the original agrarian village along the transect, several new clusters of homesteads had sprung up and were likely inhabited by farmers that had settled the land for a number of decades after migrating from Midwestern states.
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1982
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JACAL COMMUNITY
AGRICULTURAL FIELDS
TAMAULIPAN MEZQUITAL
RESACA
CATTLE GRAZING
IRRIGATION CANAL
1982 By the early 1980’s, the most significant shift on site since the last transect depiction occurred with the introduction of a major floodway that would divert the Rio Grande’s water after significant natural disasters. This initiative was brought on as a result of the most damaging tropical cyclone in the Valley’s history, Hurricane Beulah, which wreaked havoc across the entire region in the late summer of 1967 due to swelling waterways upstream that would spill over the riverbanks and across the delta, in its natural design. Farmland still dominated the immediate area, and imaging created through remote sensing reveals an interesting contrast between passive and active fields of production. The fallow parcels were needed as a means to restore soil fertility as part of crop rotation. In addition, the riparian tract of native vegetation had been converted into a wildlife refuge, securing this parcel of vital habitat in perpetuity.
89
2002
90
JACAL COMMUNITY
AGRICULTURAL FIELDS
TAMAULIPAN MEZQUITAL
IRRIGATION CANAL
RESACA
CATTLE GRAZING
SUBURBAN COMMUNITY
2002 As a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and the region’s proximity to Mexico, rapid urbanization brought on by a shifting economic sector began to rival the agricultural landscape across the Valley with a prime conduit for fresh produce imports being trucked in from Mexico. Urban sprawl began to encroach on site with the incorporation of a new suburban community named Sharyland Plantation, which was another indicator of the distant booster era’s legacy and power in marketing to wishful homeowners. However, because of the site’s adjacency to the borderline, much of the sprawl that originated further north had only dipped ever so slightly into this location, which meant that there was still a significant amount of acreage dedicated to farming.
91
2020
92
JACAL COMMUNITY
AGRICULTURAL FIELDS
TAMAULIPAN MEZQUITAL
IRRIGATION CANAL
RESACA
CATTLE GRAZING
SUBURBAN EXPANSION
2020 Today, the Valley is considered to include a few of the fastest growing metro areas in the state of Texas. In the last eighteen years since the initial encroachment of sprawl onto the site, an even larger set of parcels zoned for residential and commercial development have appeared on site. Newly built man-made resacas are now capturing stormwater, providing ample habitat for wildlife, and offering curated imaging of the historically picturesque landscape to the young set of neighborhoods. One of the more striking additions alongside the suburban expansion was a new border crossing into Mexico, which includes a bridge system over the river and a Department of Homeland Security station for processing the daily round of travelers that come to and from Mexico for business, family or recreation.
93
2041
94
JACAL COMMUNITY
AGRICULTURAL FIELDS
PROPOSED HABITAT CORRIDORS
IRRIGATION CANAL
INTEGRATION OF RESACA
SUBURBAN COMMUNITY
CATTLE GRAZING
PROPOSED CANAL TRAIL
2041 Thematic goals for the re-imaging of the site seek to activate a material palette that will: (1) Heighten cultural expression in programmatic spaces through the introduction of true plazas (2) Mitigate urban heat island and extreme heat by reintegrating the indigenous plant vernacular into newly developed urban land parcels (3) Connect the existing patchwork of remnant natural areas with a system of greenways that also serve as walkable thoroughfares for the community’s inhabitants, and (4) Highlight agricultural heritage with the integration of hybridized canal trails and community agriculture for food and native plant production through pixel cropping- a practice where smaller field sizes and higher resolutions of diversity within the field can deliver more ecosystem services than bigger areas of sole crops. The novel matrix of land use typologies blur their edges while maintaining a unit of familiarity that is not arbitrary sprawl, providing both fuzzy and saturated resolutions.
Core design elements can be translated into multi-pixel aggregates where: (1) the planting schematic, including ornamental, habitat-driven or agricultural, becomes a working system based on cultural identity and the ecology of plant communities (2) water systems as green infrastructure are revived and integrated into the development as a means to bring a more tangible Rio Grande to the community and (3) plazas for social gathering manifest as important nuclei for recreation and economic vitality that a network of canal trails lead to and from. Through the integrated nature of an unforeseen pixel-based urbanism in the Valley, the modern booster image paves way for a digital artifact of the future that endeavors to hack the resolution of the Magic Valley place myth in a manner that is more acutely responsive to cultural atmospheres, accompanied by an emphasis on stewarding the environment and its natural splendor.
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COMMUNITY AGRICULTURE INTEGRATED PLAZA + CANAL SYSTEM RESIDENTIAL - SINGLE FAMILY HABITAT CORRIDOR + TRAIL NATIVE PLANT CROP
FALLOW LAND
TYP 1 + 2
COMMERCIAL CENTER RESIDENTIAL - MULTI FAMILY
PALM ALLEE + CANAL TRAIL
RESACA RESTORATION
96
COMMERCIAL CENTER FALLOW LAND NATIVE PLANT CROP
SUNKEN PLAZA
TYP 3
COMMUNITY AGRICULTURE
PALM ALLEE + CANAL TRAIL
97
REFLECTIONS For decades, the landscape that people of the Valley have identified most with as a greater community- palm-lined roads, numerous orchards and other crops, verdant corridors of exotic suburban lawns, and shopping “plazas�, has been an ongoing testament to the power that early 20th century land promotion had in drastically altering not only the physical terrain and its incredible biodiversity, but a perpetuating psychological relationship between descendants of its ranching pioneers, booster era farming families, and the land that they call home. By exploring new ways of perceiving the history of landscape through non-traditional means, critical perspectives can be drawn in regards to how the discipline of landscape architecture set within its historical context can combine with the agency of image in altering the material transformation of landscape through design. This intersectional approach to understanding, and designing, place in the context of a design thesis came with limitations to the ways in which some of the more prominent, contemporary methods for producing design work in the fields of landscape architecture and urbanism would call for- more robust documentation and depiction of cultural demographics and a critique of the political forces at play, as well as a deeper dive into aspects of the site analysis regarding micro-climates, hydrological gradients and human-scale conditions that more surgically convey moments of nuanced opportunity for intervention through space and time.
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Through a radical iteration of the imaging of landscape, unseen layers of richly-laden content can no doubt bolster a narrative that has, at its core, brought the Valley into the minds of new audiences and in doing so, contributed to a modern era where design can engage with the future of the region’s legacy in an ever-changing world.
63 - SHARYLAND; MAGIC VALLEY OF THE 21ST CENTURY
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Valley By-Liners. Gift of the Rio: Story of Texas Tropical Borderland. Texas: Border Kingdom Press, 1975. Print. Christian Brannstrom and Matthew Neuman, “Inventing the ‘Magic Valley’ of South Texas, 1905–1941,” Geographical Review 99 (April 2009): 123–45. Elzada U. Clover, “Vegetational Survey of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas,” Madroño Vol. 4, No. 2 (April, 1937): 41-66. Dave Egan, and William H. Tishler. “Jens Jensen, Native Plants, and the Concept of Nordic Superiority.” Landscape Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 1999, pp. 11–29. Raziel Flores, “Comparison of Eight Remnant Tamaulipan Biotic Province Plant Communities in the Lower Rio Grande Valley using Multivariate Analysis,” UTRGV Graduate College (August 2019): 58-102. Jeremy Foster. Washed with Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j. ctt7zw8ng. Accessed 26 OCT. 2020. Terry G. Jordan, “Perceptual Regions in Texas,” Geographical Review 68 (July 1978): 293. David M. Leslie, Jr., “An international borderland of concern—Conservation of biodiversity in the Lower Rio Grande Valley,” U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report (2016): 8-20. Jeffrey L. Meikle. Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation. Austin. University of Texas Press, 2015. Print. Julia Cameron Montgomery, “What Parks Mean to the Valley.” Monty’s Monthly Digest of Lower Rio Grande Valley Activities Nov. 1928: 17-50. Print. Elena Zamora O’Shea. El Mesquite. Texas: Mathis Publishing Co., 1935. Print. Frank Cushman Pierce. A Brief History of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company, 1917. Print. James Thomas Rojas, “The Creation of “Place” by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles,” Dept of Architecture MIT (1991): 34-49. Robert Runyon. Vernacular Names of Plants Indigenous to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The Brownsville News Publishing Company, 1947. Print. John Stillgoe. Landscape and Images. Virginia. University of Virginia Press, 2005. Print. John Stillgoe. Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939. Connecticut. Yale University Press, 1988. Print. George Teyssot. The American Lawn. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. Print. Cory Wimberly, Javier Martínez, David Muñoz, Margarita Cavazos, “Peons and Progressives: Race and Boosterism in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1904– 1941,” Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, Issue 4, Winter 2018, Pages 437–463.
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