T R A N S PA R E N T E C O L O G Y
Michelle Alison Jordan MLA II 2014
I would like to thank my grandparents, classmates, and thesis committee for without their support this process would not have been possible.
Copyright Š 2014 Michelle Alison Jordan All rights reserved
No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of Michelle Jordan. All images courtesy of the authors unless otherwise noted. All reasonable attempts have been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in future editions.
Tr a n s p a r e n t E c o l o g y A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Landscape Architecture in the Department of Landscape Architecture of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. By Michelle Alison Jordan 2014
Approved by Master’s Examination Committee
Scheri Fultineer, Department Head
Nicola C. De Pace, Senior Critic, Primary Thesis Advisor
Elizabeth Dean Hermann, Professor, Secondary Thesis Advisor
Adam Anderson, Critic, Secondary Thesis Advisor
An excerpt from A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (first edition 1949): There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot‌For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.
T a b le o f C ontents Glossary Of Terms 6 Abstract 7 Introduction 9 Precedents 12 Phase One 21-60 Cracks & Fissures 22 Current Issues 24 System In Scale 30 On The Ground 38 Perceptual Borders 40 East Side Transect 46 Neighborhood Typologies 54 Reflection Phase One 60
Phase Two 67-84 Site Selection Criteria 68 Site Conditions 70 Infiltration 71
Site Typologies 76 Parking Lot - Private 78 Private - Private -Public 80 Public - Private - Private 82 Reflection Phase Two 84
Phase Three 89-116 System Organization 90 Web Of Projects 91 Addressing Density 94 Providence’s Building Code 96 Aqueous Activism 98-113 The Future 114 Reflection Phase Three 116
Conclusion 118 Bibliography 120
G lossary o f T erms E
COLOGY (noun): the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings (OED) Personal Definition: the study of natural systems to understand how layered connections work
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ULTURE (noun): the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of particular nation, people, or other social group (OED)
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LIMATE CHANGE (noun): a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels (OED) Personal Definition: a change in the climate that has been reduced to a political issue and become a topic that polarized people
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ONTEXT (Noun) : the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed (OED)
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Personal Definition: the circumstances that influence a particular place
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CALE (Noun): an instrument for weighing. Scales were originally simple balances (pairs of scales) but are now usually devices with an internal weighing mechanism housed under a platform on which the thing to be weighed is placed, with a gauge or electronic display showing the weight ; (Verb) weigh a specified weight (OED) Personal Definition: intervals that allow you to understand different aspects of a site or project Micro-scale (noun): a very small scale Personal definition: a very small scale that lets you understand how detailed elements work together within a larger context Marco-scale (noun): a large scale Personal Definition: a large scale that allows you to understand how large networks work together
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OUNDARY (noun): a line that marks the limits of an area; a dividing line
Personal Definition: a line that enforces a separation; a line crossed in an act of entry/exit or transgression EDGE (noun): the outside limit of an object, area, or surface; a place or part farthest away from the center of something (verb): provide a border or edge (OED) Personal Definition: to be at the extent of one thing in contact with something different
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dge condition (noun): within the creation of an edge there is a distinction between the edge of a system and its core identity
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RANSITION (noun): the process or changing from one state or condition to another (verb): undergo or cause to undergo a process or period of transition (OED) Personal Definition: the change between one distinct space to another
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UFFER (noun): a person or thing that prevents incompatible or antagonistic people or things from coming into contact with or harming each other (OED)
Personal Definition: the edge where things can meet and be protected from one another
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NNOVATE (verb): make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, idea or products (OED) Personal Definition: creating something new or better that improves existing needs, meets new requirement or unarticulated needs
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ESIGN (noun): a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is built or made (verb): decide upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), typically by making a detailed drawing of it (OED) Personal Definition: to conceive and plan out in the mind and be able to convey your idea to other people Spectacle (Noun): Oxford Dictionary: a visually striking performance or display ; an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact (OED)
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OLICY (noun) a course or principle of action adopted or proposed
by a government, party, business, or individual (OED) Personal Definition: Policy is the principle that guides governments, businesses and individuals. Policy reveals the guidelines that structure society.
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CTIVISM (noun): the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change (OED) Personal Definition: trying to change the social behavior of other people to align with your own views
A b stract Urban environments are removed from the sense of vulnerability and powerful dynamism that is present in the natural environment. Over half the world’s population lives in urban areas. Rural and suburban areas can no longer be relied on to provide ecological function for cities. Simplified urban systems need to be incorporated and expanded to: clean air; filter water; recycle biological waste; and provide habitat for wildlife. Climate change and the shift towards urban dwelling require a change in behavior towards the integration of complex ecological function in cites. Ecology in the urban context needs to be resilient and able to adapt to rapid changes. Design interventions can bolster ecological processes and connect people to their environments. Natural processes operate at many scales. For this thesis, my interest is in how scale (micro sidewalk, mid neighborhood and macro region) impacts these processes. The project focuses on engaging people through the activation of the urban environment through cracks in borders of cultural and ecological processes. This thesis asks how hydrology can be used to help urban inhabitants extend agency past their property boundaries by utilizing traditional and contemporary techniques of water infiltration typically implemented within the property lines to dissolve the border between property owners and engage them in their water network. It challenges the current top-down approach to stormwater management in the city and proposes a method of activism from homeowners, questioning how the process of design can help urban inhabitants extend agency past their property boundaries and restore ecological function in their neighborhood.
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L I ntro d u ction
andscape is not simply a surficial treatment to the ground surface. It has a depth and a functionality that is often forgotten or simplified, by designers and planners, city officials, and the public. It is not simply a beautiful park or picturesque view, but a combination of thousands of interactions and processes constantly impacting and changing the place. Landscape is a complex system that responds and adjusts to external and internal forces. Landscape Architects work to find a balance between concealing and revealing the way the landscape works, sometimes at the cost of either beauty or knowledge of how the systems work. Landscape plays a critical role as the venue for public participation and community involvement. The beginning of the investigation tests the implications of scale on hydrology, soil, vegetation, land-use, surface and neighborhood identity. The research specifically addresses the way natural system and cultural systems complement or collide with one another and that at these moments the true identity of each system is known. Design responds to each to develop ‘living spaces’ that are meaningful, enjoyable and improve overtime as people use and appreciate them. The complexity of these systems requires intelligent, adaptable solutions that cannot be exported from one place to another. Landscape is what ties people to place—the complex relationship between people and the land. From the beginning man has been tied to the land and functioned in response to the landscape. However, in recent history industrialization and technology have attempted to remove and simplify the ecological processes. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is a branch of the Department of Defense that implements the largest public engineering projects in the country. USACE was established in 1775 with the motto Essayons (Let Us Try), this motto embodies its central mission, which is to try and simplify and control ecological functions throughout the country for the safety of the public. Having large agencies looking out for the well being of the public is an incredible important part of the system but it is not the only one. Chuck Peter of the New York Botanical Garden is quoted in A World Without Us as having stated, This may sound blasphemous, but maintaining biodiversity is less important than maintaining a functioning ecosystem. What matters is that soil is protected, that water gets cleaned, that trees filter the air, that a canopy regenerates new seedlings to keep nutrients from draining away into the Bronx River. 1
implemented and coupled with the larger projects. Landscapes are the venue for public participation and community involvement and need to be rewoven into the urban fabric. The world is becoming urbanized. According to the World Health Organization, in the past century the world’s population has shifted from 2 out of every 10 people living in urban areas to over half today and projections that by 2030, 6 out of every 10 people will be living in cities. With the rise in urban populations, the way ecological function in cities historically has been dealt with needs to change. Historically, cities have relied on neighboring suburban and rural areas to provide these functions such as: cleaning air, filtering water and recycling biological waste. With the increasing pressure on cities the landscape needs to be thought of holistically as a complex system. Urban environments require manageable ecological systems – systems that can be maintained by a combination of city government and citizens. The urban environment often simplifies the complexity of an ecological system by using prescriptive solutions, often copied from other places. Street trees are often one species with soil imported from another location. Riparian edges shrink and become concrete embankments. Ecological systems are present in the urban environment, they break in because nature is resilient but the regularity of the species and planting schemes eliminates the possibility of variability within the environment. When people do not understand the environment and see it as a static scene out their window, the pleas from environmental activists, to make lifestyle changes seem disconnected and are easily ignored. An Inconvenient Truth by the Former Vice President Al Gore, brought the issues of climate change into the national conversation, but has had few long-term impacts. Activists play a role in bringing awareness to an issue but the disconnect cannot be addressed simply with awareness; society needs to make individual and large scale changes to have an impact. The changes do not need to be seen as worse than the current situation. Environments that change and vary cause greater attachment to the place because it becomes multidimensional and layered. As Chuck Peter alluded to, it is better to have a functioning ecosystem rather than an indigenous one.2
PA RT S T O W H O L E
This method of trying to control natural systems has worked at the expense of diverting ecological functions outside of urban environments. Designers are now working to bring the functions back to the cities not just for the betterment of the ecology but also for the public. Smaller more flexible solutions also need to be
1
Weisman, Alan. p. 32
An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water. --Arthur Stanley Eddington
2
Weisman, Alan. p. 32
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very element is part of a system. In a system every part interacts and is dependent upon the system for structure and order—each part plays a role. Air, soil and water work together in a complex chemical relationship to sustain life. Each element is dependent on one another and when one element is not functional, the system does not work. Networks and systems can be arranged and managed in different ways: hierarchical, headless, swarm or resilience. The way an organization of people or creatures organizes itself impacts its ability to interact in the face of change. Ori Braman and Rob Beckstrom an organization expert and a former CEO wrote the book, The Starfish and Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. The authors divide companies into two categories: centralized (spiders) and decentralized (starfish). Decentralization allows the system to mutate when attacked. Natural systems are decentralized—each element is part of the system and able to adjust and change if conditions fluctuate. Idealistically designers work with existing ecological networks and try to replicate them in places their integrity has been compromised. However, the natural networks have been understood in a linear simplified fashion. Engineering solutions are replicated without being redesigned for specific places. Place is critical to understanding the ecological systems at work. The identity of the part is entwined in the system. Landscape architects understand the relationship between the components and the whole. Spatial strategies create spaces that utilize these complex networks. Designers works at multiple scales—where each scale is nested within the next. Without complexity sterile, inactive environments are created. A Sand County Almanac is a collection of journal entries and short essays that illustrate the importance and necessity of ecological stewardship and complexity. Written sixty-five years ago during a time period of vast change in the way Americans perceived wilderness and nature—Aldo Leopold understood how the simplification of ecological networks would dilute resilience in habitat communities. The book foreshadows our current ecological state. He identified the divide between nature and culture and understood how the separation would impact our social and ecological environment. An excerpt from A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (first edition 1949): There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot…For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as
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free speech.3 Leopold addresses our need for wild things. He proposes that access to wild things is a right and a necessity. Wilderness is not about preserved nature but rather about an ability to change shift and evolve. The vitality of ecology comes from its ability to change and adjust itself. Place cannot be in stasis it must be a dynamic pliable system. As a designer, my position is part of an incomplete dialogue about our role in the environment. Design is a tool to engage people in the urgency of ecological problems. Leopold believed that everyone has the right to be a part of ecological processes. In cities across the country access to public space is severely limited. No longer are these issues about appreciation, they have become integral to how we need to live. Designers have struggled with the need for open space in cities since the rise of industrialization. Four types of open spaces have surfaced: not touched (space that was never manipulated, areas that are too hard to build on: riparian edges, steep cliffs); vacant land (land that has been used in the past and is often contaminated); public open space (parks, waterfronts); and private space.4 The combination of spaces makes the environment work together as a whole body. Open space and parks are the lungs, the kidneys, and the veins of the urban environment. Fredrick Olmstead designed public spaces that responded to specific contexts and a larger overall network. The Emerald Necklace unifies the wetlands throughout Boston, Brookline and the surrounding neighborhoods. The linear park network was installed to clean and control the estuaries within the city. Olmstead used the low-lying land to create both a public open space and control flooding. The park is picturesque and highly engineered, by unifying the system throughout municipal justifications he was able to design and regulate the entire watershed.
CYCLICAL CONTINUITY We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one. --Jacques Yves Cousteau
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ycles loop. They repeat. They connect the past to the present. To design is to either deny or embrace reality. Cycles offer rhythm—timing. The event occurs in a knowable pattern, people can predict and rely on the cycle working unless something derails the cycle. Development has disrupted many natural cycles
3
Leopold, Aldo, and Charles Walsh Schwartz. p. vii.
4
Del Tredici, Peter, p.15
but it has aided others. The succession cycle models how systems become balanced and then shift and reorganize. Urban environments operate in an arrested succession cycle—never stabilizing. Disturbance and immigration constantly impact the cycle and lead to the dominance of early-successional species. These species are characterized as highly dynamic and prolific—often associated as weeds. The high stress of urban environments requires these species to be adaptable and abundant. Cities are challenging places for habitat. Plants are stressed from: paving (impervious and elevates temperature); de-icing salts (high soil pH leading to drought); drainage problems (redirection of water); soil compaction; and air pollution.5 These stresses weaken plants and making them more susceptible to insects and pathogens.6 The succession cycle identifies how natural systems evolve—not as a model for how ecosystems in urban areas should be maintained but as a reference for how these species operated before. Past work in the field of landscape architecture has focused on the development of ecological systems as natural systems (hydrology, air-flow, vegetation) without attention towards the cultural, social political and economic systems.7 The ecological system is a complex web of systems including natural and cultural networks that must be thought of in tandem to be understood. Louis Kahn, an American architect who practiced in the mid-21st century, grasped the power of cycles and systems in nature and applied the same methodology to cultural occupation. In 1953 while working on a redesign of Downtown Philadelphia he developed a map of the movement of the city with arrows (see figure 2) and in referring to the drawing wrote: Expressways are like rivers. These rivers frame the area to be served. Rivers have Harbors. Harbors are the municipal parking towers; from the Harbors branch a system of Canals that serve the interior;… from the Canals branch cul-de-sac Docks; the Docks serve as entrance halls to the buildings.8 Kahn saw the city as a cyclical system and through observation a design solution would emerge. His drawing still inspires designers. The fluid movement through the city was captured through his gesture of the arrow. In the way Kahn captured movement and flux, designers need to think of the city in flux, as an evolving space that cannot be simplified or stabilized.
In design fields, the approach or methodology can separate or tie dif-
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7 8
Del Tredici, Peter, p.15
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Del Tredici, Peter, p.15 Waldheim, Charles, p30. Waldheim, Charles, p30.
ferent disciplines together. Between landscape architecture and architecture the difference lies in the embracement of cycles. Architecture designs for a pinnacle moment, the moment a project is complete. After construction is complete the slow (or fast) process of decay starts to take over. On the other hand, landscape architecture works with an understanding of cyclical growth and regeneration—allowing projects improve with time. Landscape architects lay the framework for projects that might not be completed in their lifetime. Manipulating growth and decay cycles is a challenge to any landscape architect’s work. Decay is often seen as the end, but it is really the beginning of something new. Rot is the recycling of elements for other uses. After a tree dies, its life is not over. The tree becomes a host for many species: fungi, beetles, molds, bacteria, and worms all feed on the tree and break it into smaller fragments that eventually become humus a fertile medium for ferns and new shrubs and trees to propagate in. Cycles challenge, inspire and complicate design. They are complex and layered. They need to be worked with rather than supplanted. Tying work into natural processes grounds the work and requires it to be flexible and adaptable. Urban environments need to design spaces that can change in response to climate change and the increase in population pressure. Urban environments will be place to test and understand how development will occur.
B O U N D A RY Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence. --Milian Kundera
The layers of public and private space are divided into an intimacy gradient. An understanding of the zones of proper behavior is a social construction that outlines how people should behave. Every culture has rules for social behavior. Looking at the road in different cultures sets up how interaction will occur. Social norms arise from historic, climatic and physical topography. New York stoop culture is derived in part from the separation within townhouses between the lower floor as service areas and the upper floors as social areas. The tradition was translated from European cities with the new immigrant populations. In Europe services went on the ground floor because flooding was a common occurrence. As such the front entrance was elevated above the street causing the need for stoops. Travel brings out cultural differences in the division of space. Every culture uses their streetscape slightly differently: in Montreal the street goes underground in the winter, in Istanbul the street is public and private with clothes hung between buildings and cards played in the streets. Research in cultural geography breaks down cultural cues and helps develop methods for designers to understand the space between private and public space. The concept of topological depth10 was developed to breakdown the space into geometric increments that can be measured. Designers have the ability to disrupt or reinforce borders through changes in: elevation, material, direction, and flows. Boundary and border appear to be discussing the same condition but Steven Gould argues that in ecology each functions in a different manner. He describes the difference between boundary and borders as: The boundary is an edge where things end; the border is an edge where difference groups interact. At borders, organisms become more interactive, due to the meeting of different species or physical conditions; for instance, where the shoreline of a lake meets solid land is an active zone of exchange where organisms find and feed off other organisms. Not surprisingly, it is also at the borderline where the work of natural selection is the most intense. Whereas the boundary is a guarded territory, as established by prides of lions or packs of wolves. No transgression at the boundary: Keep Out! Which means the edge itself is dead.11
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oundary is a separation between two things, groups, or factions. Boundaries can be the result of politics, physical barriers, or historical events. Boundaries can flow into one another in a gradient or a mosaic can form where boundaries are abrupt and patchy. The thickness of the border determines what type of interaction occurs. Three mechanisms impact vegetation boundaries: patchy physical environment (soil types or landforms), natural disturbances, and human activities.9 These boundaries can be hard or soft transitions. Knowing the type of boundary gives a basic understanding of how malleable or fixed the place is.
Land Mosaics p83
Another example of this translation is the border between Canada and the United States. In a video featured on Radiolab, CGP Grey emphasizes the real physical divide between the two countries by geo-referencing the border markers. This line is actually made up of over 900 lines. The border between the two countries was developed over decades or treaties and land disputes in the beginning. But in the rush to establish boundaries for the west in 1846, both countries signed the Oregon Treaty, which established the border to be along the 49th parallel. By establishing this border based on a map that had not even been fully developed and not the physical geographical elements of the landscape the on-the-ground reality of the border divides the space in sometimes bizarre ways, with odd cuts that separate lakes, islands and peninsulas from their parents countries. The realization of this abstract political border creates spaces that defy the identity of either side and become new spaces with entirely different conceptions of identity. The physical form of the landscape overrides the abstract lien drawn on a map. Borders and boundaries are the places where two forces meet and that zone can be complex and layered or dead and singular. Designers need to know how to work with ecological and cultural systems to achieve designs that can evolve with society. Natural systems have an amazing ability to adapt and change in response to harsh environments. The challenge of politics in urban development has given rise to new territories for habitat and wildlife—designers just need to harness the mysterious and adaptable nature of the environment.
When the boundary is enforced and activity is not allowed to occur it, other forces or processes start to take other and thrive in the unchecked zone. For example, in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea has become a haven for wildlife habitat. The zone, which was closed in 1953, has remained
Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, Social Logic of Space
Sennett, Richard. p.5
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untouched by either side and now harbors several endangered species, including the white-napped and red-crowned cranes. The complex political situation between the two countries has left prime agricultural land as a wildlife corridor. This border has become an ecological haven not because it was designed to be an ecological haven for these species, but because of a political decision to separate two countries, the conditions and circumstances protected the space. Once abstract political borders are applied to the landscape a translation between the map and physical space occurs.
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PRECEDENTS Portland Bioswales Portland, Oregon led the nation in the use of bioswales to keep rainwater out of over burdened stormwater systems. As of January 2014, Portland had installed 1,350 bioswales and managed 125 million gallons of street water. The bioswales have developed and extended beyond their original design and scope of use. The city is constantly trying to update their use and efficiency. As other cities try to adopt the methods developed in Portland it is important to understand the importance of place. The bioswales were specifically designed for Portland, Oregon: soil, hydrology, ecology, culture and climate all had an impact on the design and success of the project. Using Portland’s design as a precedent requires an understanding of how the design is tied to place. Comparing Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon helps position the two places in relation to one another and understand the impact of those differences. The cities differ in two main categories: rain fall amounts and temperature. According to weather database, Providence on average catches slightly over 47 inches of rain per year whereas Portland receives slightly over 39 inches of rain per year. Providence and Portland both receive a great deal of precipitation throughout the year; however, in Providence average monthly temperatures are below freezing four months out of the year whereas in Portland temperatures rarely dip below freezing. Using Portland’s bioswales as a precedent highlighted the importance of place. Climate plays a bit role in the success of the bioswales. The lack of freezing weather allows infiltration to happen year-round and now having to deal with snow and ice limits the amount of chemicals placed on the streets. These differences require new strategies for a colder, fluctuating climate. Portland’s bioswales also would benefit from more flexibility and adaptability to their adjacencies. By taking on the cultural norms and practices the bioswales could repair not only the hydrologic cycle but also cultural and economic disparities between neighborhoods. Place and ecological simultaneously need to be repaired. 12
Left Page Images: http://www.ekokuce.com/vesti/transport/najzelenija-ulica-u-americi; https://landperspectives.wordpress.com/tag/green-streets/; http://dutchdialogues.com/2010/04/20/precedents/ne-siskiyou-green-street-portland4/ Right Page Image: http://www.sitesystems-landscape.com/Stormwatermanagement.html
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WADE + MAP In southwestern Utah, six colleagues and myself walked 47 miles of the Virgin River during the hot, dry summer months. We would rise early in the morning to try to beat the heat, layering on thin shirts, sunblock and hats to protect us from the 100+ degree heat. Over the course of the summer we learned the power of the river. We waded, floated and walked the river to map the on the ground conditions of the river. We developed detailed descriptions of the conditions on the ground: embankments; invasive species; farmlands that touched the river; outflow pipes; where the river had moved; and any good swimming locations. The project connected local town planning boards to conservation groups. Our grounded methodology was a counterpoint to the rise of mapping from satellites. By physically engaging the river and the surroundings our analysis was entwined with the river. The inspiration for the project was a critique on the way mapping is currently done. Rather than go to a site, designers often download data and work off sometimes-flawed information. Analysis has moved away from a personal understanding of place to a checklist of categories. Engagement with site is necessary to produce a design that connects space to a place. Wade + Map critiqued the way we engage a site as designers—it asks designers to go beyond a surface reading and really understand the forces of ecology and culture.
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Left and Right Page Images: FormTomorrow
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Reboot, Redraw: Massachusetts Ryan Sullivan is a designer examining the role of data, illustrations, maps and pictograms. Sullivan analyzed the way municipal boundaries have been constructed and maintained for generations without questioning. Historic transportation routes, natural features and outdated political jurisdictions still heavily impact the way modern cities are run and develop. His project Redraw Reboot, studies the current role of municipal boundaries through reimagining their delineation. He maps current divisions and explores alternative delineations: town meeting boundaries; electoral districts; watersheds and ecotomes. Sullivan is not the first person to suggest that municipal boundaries relate to watershed boundaries. John Wesley Powell, an American explorer of the West at the end of the 1800’s, subdivided the western states by watersheds after realizing how important water would be to the arid landscape. His utopian vision for the West could have saved the West from its current battles over water rights, but it was never implemented. The role of political and property boundaries has shaped development.
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Left and Right Page Images: Ryan Sullivan, Past in Place: http://www.pasteinplace.com/
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TRANSPARENT ECOLOGY Phase One Fissures in Ecological and Cultural Systems
Questions: In the urban environment, what borders separate ecological and cultural processes and how does scale blur or illuminate these borders?
Cracks & Fissures
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Images: http://rabidpanda1.deviantart.com/art/Cracks-in-the-sidewalk-2-258030473; http://rabidpanda1.deviantart.com/art/Cracks-in-the-sidewalk-2-258030473; http://sidewalksaver.com/blog1/; http://www.firsthandlearning.org/cracks.html; https://www.flickr.com/photos/joemud/1833951801/ http://www.texturepop.com/pic.php?id=958; and my own
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Current Issues
There exists a schism in the way landscape is understood. Landscape is not simply a beautiful design that frames picturesque views. Landscape is what ties people to place—the complex relationship between people and the land. From the beginning man has been tied to the land and functioned in response to the landscape. However, in our recent history industrialization and technology have attempted to remove and simplify ecological processes. Landscape is a complex system that responds and adjusts to external and internal forces. The Army Corp. of Engineers works to simplify and control ecological function throughout the country. This method of trying to control natural systems has worked at the expense of diverting ecological functions outside of urban environments. Designers are now working to bring the functions back to the cities not just for the betterment of the ecology but also for the public. Landscapes are the venue for public participation and community involvement and need to be rewoven into the urban fabric. The world is becoming urbanized. According to the World Health Organization, in the past century the world’s population has shifted from 2 out of every 10 people living in urban areas to over half today and projections that by 2030, 6 out of every 10 people will be living in cities. With the rise in urban populations, the way ecological function in cities historically has been dealt with needs to change. Historically, cities have relied on neighboring suburban and rural areas to provide these functions such as: cleaning air, filtering water and recycling biological waste. With the increasing pressure on cities the landscape needs to be thought of holistically as a complex system.
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Sol Lewitt Vertical Line Scribbles, 2005 http://galeriemessine.com/en/artistes/oeuvres/7434/sol-lewitt
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Hard Line
Ecological Processes Blurred Zone Hydrology Watersheds (overall regional water movement) Waterways (water network streams to oceans) Stormwater (movement of water out of a city)
Flexible Border
Soil Additions (organic matter/wind/water depositions) Losses (wind/water/uptake/erosion/harvest) Transformations (chemical weathering) Translocations (movement through horizons) Vegetation Residue patches (hard to develop land) Intentionally managed landscapes (parks, memorials) Rubble landscapes (sidewalks, vacant land, stormwater grates)
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E
C
divided
E
C
partitioned
Cultural Processes
Land Use (public-private) Institution (embedded or distinct) Residential (historic/student/low-income) Commercial (food service/shops) Park/Civic (monuments/malls or natural/formal) Ground Surface Materiality (concrete/pavers/cobblestones/asphalt) Dimension (changes in width depending upon adjacencies)
E
C porous
E
C shared
Neighborhood Identity Front yard (dimension: none or buffer) Street use (utilitarian/passive)
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S ensory Bo u n d aries
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SYSTEM IN SCALE V egetation
Plants tell a lot about a place. They indicate hydric levels, soil type, compaction, maintenance levels, and climate. Plants provide a wide range of function: filtering toxins and nutrients, water regulation, recycling carbon dioxide, and creating biomass that fuels all animals and people. Every place had a natural plant palette that explains what type of place it was. Understanding what types of plants used to exist in the area can suggest plants that can tolerate the conditions today. Urban environments are challenging places for plants. Non-native fill soils, soil compaction and contamination, impermeable pavement and pollution challenge all plants, but some thrive in these difficult situations. Urbanization and globalization have had profound effects of plants. Most plants in the urban environment are not native but have developed ways of adapting to the stresses of the urban environment. Some species have become perfect specimens for urban environments to the point where they are considered invasive. Peter Del Tredici wrote Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast in 2010. The book highlights the need to have plants that can tolerate and thrive in the urban environment, even if the plants are considered weeds or invasive. Urban plants provide the functions that make urban environments livable.
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English Ivy growing into sidewalk
Left Page Map: created with RI GIS Data
Bittersweet cut back many times
Ash tree growing out of street tree pit
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Water
Water is a unique molecule. Its chemical composition allows it to attach to itself and other compounds, which allows the water cycle to work. Water is a resource, a medium and a fluid. Water is constantly changing and moving. Precipitation falls from the sky and runs perpendicular to the contours into streams, rivers and eventually the ocean. During this cycle some of the water is infiltrated into the groundwater table and fills aquifers, water also evaporates through transpiration and evaporation to come down again as precipitation. Impervious materials accelerate the water cycle by not allowing the water to slowing infiltrate into the ground the water is rushed towards the nearest water body and deposited into the ocean, unfiltered. Urban environments are mostly impervious and try to move water through the system as fast as possible. This has led to shrinking aquifers throughout the world. In the US water is moved great distances because aquifers close to cities are depleted at this point. In southern California water comes from aqueducts located hundreds of miles away. In thinking about the future, water scarcity is a limiting factor for southern California and people are starting to think about ways to recharge the water cycle.
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Left Page Map: created with Google Maps 2014
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S oil
Soil is a living, breathing material. It is medium for growth, it filters and holds water, and it is home to microorganisms that breakdown organic waste. Soil is specific to place—climate, elevation, biotic activity and parent materials all impact the way soil functions. The movement of soil has become part of the natural environment. Throughout the 19th century wetlands were filled in to create new land. These new built landscapes became part of the city fabric the new extent of the land. In Providence massive swathes of land have been cut and filled. Soil maps show the water’s edge being made up primarily of fill. The history of soil in Providence goes back to the glaciers. The end moraine is located along the southern tip of Rhode Island. Glaciers moved and shifted parent material throughout the state on a larger scale than man has in the past several hundred years. The movement of glaciers can be followed and tracked through the state. Living on fill makes it harder to predict soil behavior. If clay material with lots of organic matter was used as fill many different problems could arise: flooding (due to the higher water holding capacity), higher nutrient counts (microbes and bacteria attracted due to cation-exchange) or soil settling (due to the decomposition of organic matter).
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Merrimac (MU)
Left Page Map: created with RI GIS and Go-ogle Maps 2014 Right Page Images: Created with New England Soil Profiles
Paxton (PD)
Udorthents (UD)
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Unplanned
Designed
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ON THE GROUND R esi d ential Bor d ers
Property Lines are borders. They delineate ownership and separation. However, borders are not thin lines drawn on the landscape, they have thickness, a width. This line is in one way very definite and finite but it can also be ephemeral and temporary. Hydrologic and ecological systems ignore these lines unless there is a material differentiation. A driveway that is paved with asphalt next to a driveway with permeable pavers operates very differently in terms of hydrology and ecology. For the driveway with pavers water can infiltrate and the soil beneath can be alive and active because it can breathe, whereas the paved driveway moves all water off it’s surface and cuts off interaction between the soil beneath and air. Most natural systems flow over borders without recognizing that they are borders. Rain, snow, soil, plants, animals and climate are all unaffected by political borders. Breaking down the effects of borders on natural systems unifies and ties place and people together.
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P ercept u al Bor d ers Borders and boundaries impact the cultural and ecological processes in the urban environment. Five perceived borders through out the East Side of Providence were examined: infrastructure, crossing, shared, blurred and informal. Each border responded to different ecological and cultural boundaries, with a noticeable overlap between some of the borders.
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Infrastructure
Highway infrastructure is a boundary. The massive scale and danger associated with high speed has caused a physical separation in cities. The I-195 highway that runs along the edge of Fox Point in Providence separates the East Side from the water. India Point Park is a large public park that runs along the water’s edge. The park is a great amenity for the community of Fox Point and the city of Providence; however, access to the park requires crossing the highway infrastructure. To access the park as a pedestrian there is one elevated pedestrian bridge and two roads at either end of the park. The elevated crossing creates a different relationship between pedestrian and car from the other two crossings that require going
under the highway. The crossing beneath the highway is daunting. The massive scale and cold surfaces are repelling. The dimension of the sidewalk decreases. Through subtle and blatant cues the pedestrian feels removed and out of place.
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Crossing
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Curbs are designed to separate two uses. The change in elevation keeps pedestrians above the roadway. By separating the two each is safer, the pedestrian is out of the way of the car, and the car has a bumper to keep it on the road. Curbs are most often used to separate cars from pedestrians, but they can also be used to control where people walk. An elevated curb is much harder to cross accidentally than a flat surface. People often try to cut corners when they can. This leads to people putting up fences or elevated curbs to keep people out of their front yards. Curbs can also be used to create separate space. Elevating the grade behind the curb creates a transition zone that allows passage and separation between the side-
walk and the space.
Shared
Retail and residential space mix the private and public within the same building. Retail space uses the sidewalk as advertisement and outdoor space. Restaurants often have small tables along the edge of the sidewalk. These tables or chairs narrow the sidewalk and require people to wait or move into the road occasionally, this variation in the dimension of the sidewalk creates visual and physical interest—in the same way that variation in facades makes a street more engaging. By placing something for sale outside the storefront the sidewalk becomes part of the store it attracts us and adds variety. Another dimension is added by having apartments above the stores. Making the space public and private. Trashcans and
recycling bins can be seen off the side of the street. Lived spaces are appealing. Think about shops along a strip mall versus shops along a street. At the strip mall the main method of transportation is the car because no one lives close by and the sidewalks feel uncomfortable. Places were retail and residents are combined have the added dimension of people moving around in and out through out the day.
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Blurred
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A sidewalk has many material changes along their length. Driveways cross sidewalks repeatedly and depending upon the location the material sometimes changes. Sidewalks along parking lots become interesting location of ambiguity, especially if the material is the same. Sidewalks often get take over by the car. Constant driving over the edge of the sidewalk breaks down the edge and starts to dissolve the distinction. The dimension of a sidewalk is impacted by its adjacency. The lack of distinction between sidewalk and asphalt parking lot is not clear when the edge of the sidewalk is broken up by the constant wear on the walk. Clear lines are hard to find and define between the two.
Informal
Walkways are not always planned. Informal paths occur at places where openings and motivation align. Flat surfaces at street corners are often places where a cut-through develops. The desire to walk the shortest distance and the ease of not having to step over something combine and a path is formed. After a cut-through has developed it is often hard for the landowner to stop the behavior. Once people have a way of moving from A to B they follow it. If a landowner decides that they no longer want people crossing their yard they must create a physical barrier, either a walk or an elevation change that changes the dynamic. 45
EAST SIDE TRANSECT The East Side in Providence is sandwiched between the Seekonk and Providence Rivers. These two river brought agriculture, maritime and industry to the city. This historic layout from the 1600s is still visible throughout the area. Long narrow plots of land connected the water with land. Original landowners names remain as street names. Walking over the hill from one river to the other, gives an overview of the layout of the larger neighborhood. Each threshold between commercial-residential, residential-institution is unique and responsive to other surrounding. Brown Universi46
ty occupies the top of the hill, with residents surrounding the campus. Residential zones in Providence transition between historic homes that have been preserved or restored. Benefit Street is part of the first historic district in the US. These houses are larger and still have large backyards. Student housing and non-historic housing have filled in the gaps with apartment buildings and single detached housing. As the walk moved between each zone the transitions, some transitions were abrupt while others bleed into one another.
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Map and Section: created with Geocontext and Google Maps 2014
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N E I G HB O R H O O D T Y P O L O G I E S Old Settlement
In the historical district, the landscape is verdant and lush. Deciduous and evergreen plants are layered to create a screen between the street and the property. The layered screen creates ideal habitat for many birds, squirrels, snakes and other urban wildlife. The landscape has little hardscape, which allows for infiltration on site. The houses and landscapes are maintained at a high level and make the area an attraction for people walking by.
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Right Image: Google Street View 2014
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Collegiate Expanse
Institutional grounds require large open spaces for safety, security and student use. Long sight lines are critical on college campuses so students can orient themselves, find colleagues, and pace themselves off distance markers. The large lawns are also used for passive (reading, sunbathing and talking) and active (running, Frisbee throwing and small pickup games) recreation. To ground the lawn and the buildings, massive trees are planted and create a ceiling for the lawn. Most of campuses also have plants at their walkways entrances that welcome and funnel people through specific thresholds on the campus. 56
Right Image: Google Street View 2014
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Portuguese Patio
An impervious driveway can typify the community of Fox Point’s landscapes. The driveways are the center of the backyard with planting along the edge. The planting is often edible (grapes specifically) and provide the household with shade (through trellises over the driveway). The community uses their backyards as social gathering places that are visible accessible to the street and their neighbors.
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Right Image: Google Street View 2014
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R e fl e c t i o n Phase One
This investigation analyzed cultural and ecological boundaries and borders through scale. The process of zooming in and out highlighted different aspects of the systems and processes. The method of changing scales opened up new insights into the way borders effect the integration of ecology and culture. The investigation focused on three primary ecological systems (soil, vegetation and water) to test their impact on each other and cultural systems. Soil is a living system with additions and losses. At a regional scale, the main influences on soil are large-scale tectonic forces, glaciers and water networks. These forces offer the primary characteristics of the soil, however, specific sites are influenced by the cut and fill that has happened on site. Vegetation grows and colonizes every available part of the planet, including the urban environment. Regional ecotomes and plant communities’ shift in response to the urban environment, many native species are not able to survive in the tough urban conditions. The urban environment limits the plant species palette available in the urban environment but it does not limit vegetation. Water is responsive to topography, flowing perpendicular downwards. Watersheds indicated ridgelines where water flows off either side. This describes the larger movements of water, but does not describe the mircotopography and permeability of the individual site. Borders and boundaries define how neighborhoods responded to the ecological and cultural processes. Large scale infrastructure or zoning patterns create edges that have been created as a response and can change the ecological processes. Phase 1 gathered information for the East Side in Providence. It gave an overall context to the problems and issues with how the ecological systems interact with 60
the cultural systems. Typologies were developed to analyze and categorize different neighborhoods: Old Settlement, Collegiate Expanse and Portuguese Patio. The Old Settlement was characterized by large property borders and verdant landscapes. Collegiate Expanse represented the large lawns and trees of the Brown campus. Portuguese Patio had dense multi-family housing with narrow paved driveways that would be used as outdoor terraces. The overall scope of the investigation focused on too large a site for the given time. Through analysis in Phase 1, the Portuguese Patio, Fox Point neighborhood in Providence, had the richest possibilities due to its housing density, unique cultural makeup, and relationship to surrounding neighborhoods. The site is sandwiched between Wickenden Street and the highway. Beyond the highway are India Point Park and the Narragansett Bay. Although the neighborhood is located in close proximity to the bay there is still hard infrastructural boundaries separating the two. The pedestrian bridge has aided access to the water but the highway is still a prominent boundary for the neighborhood. The ecological and cultural systems flow between the neighborhood and the bay. In Phase 2, the focus will be on specifically Fox Point as a site and how the ecological processes influence the site through the lens of hydrology. The next phase will zoom-in to specific moments in the landscape where the collisions of ecological and cultural processes occur. The soil section starts to explore the way; vegetation, soil and water operate under the sidewalk. Through the examination of hydrology as it relates to residential borders, the next phase with challenge the complexity and layered relationship between ecology and culture for individual homeowners.
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A d visors C omments
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TRANSPARENT ECOLOGY Phase Two Stormwater Management through Community Action
Question: How can ecological processes, specifically hydrology, help urban inhabitants extend agency past their property boundaries?
SITE SE L E C TION C RITERIA
Density of Housing
close proximity side yards used as driveways
Lack of pervious surfaces
requirement of new building code
Housing character
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similar worker housing style
Fox Point
I - 195
Providence Harbor Map: created with Google Maps 2014
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SITE C ON D ITIONS
Vacant Building
Fence Delineation
Narrow Yards
Prayer Flags Attached to Street Tree
Eroding Soil
Excess Space as Garden
Street Planters
Parking Lots
Fence Delineation
Street Tree Pruning
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PERVIOUS SURFACES
average in neighborhood less than 2% existing conditions
33%
building code minimum
IN F I L TRATION
This phase focused on hydrology and its role in a small neighborhood within the Fox Point neighborhood. After researching the site and its surrounding context, the lack of pervious surfaces became evident. Through physically constructing models at different sizes, the neighborhood infiltration patterns became evident. The context model, at 100 scale, explains the relationship between the site and locations for infiltration in the surrounding area. By looking specifically at areas of infiltration patterns in land development started to become clear. The rhythm of tree pits starts to indicate street edges and the backyards start to become the focus of the model. The relationship to India Point Park and the large scale of Interstate 195 became predominant. The neighborhood model, at 20 scale, shows the way roads and houses dominate the area. The relationships show the way water moves around and over most of the neighborhood, not having anywhere to move into the ground. The visualization of infiltration showed the footprints of houses in relation to areas on infiltration and highlight possible connections.
1� rain storm on a house lot in Fox Point (approximately 2000 ft ) 2
=166.7 ft3 of water 71
Context (100 scale) 72
Neighborhood (20 scale)
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Relationship between Infiltration and Homes 74
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SITE T Y P O L O G IES
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Private-Private-Public
Public-Private-Private
Parking Lot- Private
Site Model 1/4� scale
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P ARKIN G L OT - P RI V ATE
sloping embankment sloped underground drainage
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crushed stone reservoir
Opportunistic Cleansing
Broken Barrier
(40)(2)(3)=240.0 ft3 (40)(3.5)(4.5)=630.0 ft3 holding capacity 870.0 ft3
(40)(2)(3)=240.0 ft3 (40)(3.5)(3)=420.0 ft3 holding capacity 660.0 ft3
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P RI V ATE - P RI V ATE - P U B L I C
sloped underground drainage
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crushed stone reservoir
Channeled Brook
Shared Wall
(50)(7)(0.67)=233.3 ft3 (50)(0.5)(4)=100.0 ft3 (50)(12)(0.67)=402.0 ft3 (50)(0.5)(4.5)=225.0ft3 holding capacity 960.3 ft3
(50)(7)(0.67)=233.3 ft3 (50)(0.5)(4)=100.0 ft3 (50)(12)(0.67)=402.0 ft3 (50)(0.5)(4.5)=112.5ft3 holding capacity 847.8 ft3
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P U B L I C - P RI V ATE - P RI V ATE
sloped underground drainage
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crushed stone reservoir
Gabion Filter
Restorative Edge
(34)(2)(3)=68.0 ft3 (34)(17)(0.67)=385.3 ft3 holding capacity 453.3 ft3
(34)(2)(3)=204 ft3 (34)(17)(0.67)=385.3 ft3 (18)(0.5)(1)=9 ft3 holding capacity 598.3 ft3
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R e fl e c t i o n P h a s e Tw o
This investigation focused on the hydrological processes within the Fox Point neighborhood. By focusing on a series of four houses and their relationship to one another and hydrology, the investigation proposed a series of design solutions that would help repair the damaged hydrologic cycle and bring together neighbors through design interventions. This phase focused on relating an individual block to its surroundings. The site became the center of the project and the design related to specific elevations and conditions pertaining to the block. Through models, sketches and drawings multiple design solutions for the houses were created. These solutions generated shared agency through involving the community and rethinking current property boundaries. Proposed designs rethought the presence of walls, ground underneath driveways, and under-utilized space in parking lots. The design focused on the creating a pamphlet that would help the community gain awareness of the principles of water. The next phase will question, how to transform the power of legislation from a municipal power into a community organized effort. The investigation will try to accomplish change through minimal cost, effort and energy, by exploiting the natural processes of ecological systems, such as strategic planting of trees to break up asphalt.
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Weekly Agenda
Weekly Agenda
In the urban environment, what borders separate ecological and cultural processes and how does scale blur or illuminate these borders?
How can ecological processes, specifically hydrology, help urban inhabitants extend agency past their property boundaries?
How do we better integrate complex ecologies into urban environments, and furthermore how do encourage the inhabitants of cities to be responsible and integral to the process?
In the urban environment, what borders separate ecological and cultural processes and how does scale blur or illuminate these borders?
Week One March 17-24 Specific Site Analysis Fox Point & Hydrology Photographs of site and context Focus in on the specifics Where street trees are located Material changes in the sidewalk Backyard elevation changes Private/Public interface Long detailed section between Wickenden and India Point Park focusing on the way water responds to the borders/boundaries
How do we better integrate complex ecologies into urban environments, and furthermore how do encourage the inhabitants of cities to be responsible and integral to the process?
Week Two March 24-31 (Spring Break) Diagrams that illustrate the components of the section Models of different systems with in Fox Point Fox Point/Highway Week Three March 31-Apil 7 Finish models Complete any additional drawings Phase Two Review April 8 Writing April 8-14
Week Three March 31-April 7 Finish Âź scale model Curbing Insertion (design element) Paint houses Detailed section of insertion Include soil types and changes Infiltration zone Property boundaries Finish impervious drawing Diagram building code 40% pervious versus >10% now Perspective Section Transfer and construction Context/Transition Sections (1/16 models) Neighborhood-highway Highway-park Park-water Diagrams (plan and section) Water movement Circulation Pervious/impervious
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TRANSPARENT ECOLOGY Phase Three Aqueous Activism: a citizen’s guide to stormwater management
Question: How do we integrate complex ecologies into urban environments, and furthermore how do we encourage the inhabitants of cities to be responsible and integral to the process?
Sy s t e m O r g a n i z at i o n
Currently water management operates in a centralized network that requires large infrastructure to handle the combined water outflow. Dealing with water at a localized scale would take pressure off the overburdened centralized system and into the hands of private stakeholders.
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Centralized
Decentralized
Green Infrastructure Projects
RI Stormwater Solutions Educate Rhode Island residents about stormwater
RI BRWCT
Mashapaug Pond
Public Campaign
Stormwater management
City streets
Stormwater Policy and Practices
$75,000 for public stormwater projects that can serve as models
Rhode Island Bays, Rivers and Watersheds Coordination Team ($900,000)
Municipal Outreach
Roger Wiliams Park
Climate change adaptation
Freshwater Resources Water-Relient Economic Development
Workshops
NEMO
Rhode Island Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials
Lisa DeProspo Philo
Communications Specialist
Lisa Hollister
Communications Specialist
Lorraine Joubert Director
URI
University of Rhode Island Coorpoerative Extension
Vanessa Venturini
Youth Environmental Educator
Kate Venturini Outreach Director
Mayor of Providence
Director
United States Government
Municipal Government
Municipal Government
Lincoln Chafee
Narragansett Bay Commision
Governor of Rhode Island
Clean Water Act
Local non-profit for improving water quality in the Bay
1972 act in reaction in polluted water ways
Ralph Mollis
Secretary of State
EPA
Allision Hamel
Administrator
Environmental Scientist
Meg Kerr Tresurer
Chuck Allot Director
PNPP
RIDEM
Providence Neighborhood Planting Program
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management
Margarita Chatterton Senior Sanitary Engineer
Eric Beck
Supervising Engineer
Douglas Still
Janet Colt
Providence City Forester
Director
Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council
CRMC
NPDES
Local non-profit for improving water quality in the Woonasquatucket River Watershed
Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council
National Pollution Discharge Elimination Service
Megan Higgins
Permitting
URI Narragansett Bay Campus Executive Director
Rhode Island Land Trust
Director
EPA New England Division
Margarita Chatterton
Raymond Marshall
Tom Ardito
Local land trust for conserving sustainable land conservation
Michael Lewis
Municipal Government
Director
International Company
Rhode Island Depatment of Transportation
Gina McCarthy
Curt Spalding
MWH
RIDOT
Environmental Protection Agency
This map illustrates the current way that stormwater projects happen in Providence. The network is focused primarily on a top-down approach. Most projects incorporate the community at the end of the project, once most of the design decisions have been made. This booklet encourages a new system where the community initiates the project and then the government takes notice. This project works as a catalyst for other neighborhoods in Providence and beyond.
City of Providence
State of Rhode Island
President Barak Obama
Web of projects
Mayor Angell Taveras
Janet Colt
Council Member
Jeff Wells
Deputy Director
Donald T. Burns
Anne Maxwell
President
Chair
Save the Bay
Local non-profit for improving water quality in the Bay
Waterkeeper
National Pogram
Coastkeeper David Prescott
Baykeeper Tom Kutcher
Jonathan Stone Director
RI Habitat Restoration
CSO Control Facilities Phase III
Governor Budget
Restoring Habitat
Green and Sustainable Infrastructure
$3 million local open space grants
Restoring habitat in Rhode Island Public Awareness
Improve Water Quality Restoration Principles
Alternatives to the current CSO project Intergrated Planning Framework
$75 million “Clean Water, Open Space and Healthy Communities Bond� $3 million DEM farmland purchase program
$4 million for DEM land conservation and acquisition program
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W here d o es it g o ? 92
A nalysis / criti q u e o f t h e s t a t us q u o
Providence is currently in the process of modernizing the stormwater system. The process began in 1992 when federal law mandated that water quality must be addressed and bacteria counts in the Narragansett Bay brought down to a safer level. The first and second phases were completed in 2014. Before moving into the third and final phase a reassessment of the overall project and the methodology was undertaken. The analysis discovered that the design was rigid and required larger and larger infrastructure (mainly piping) to collect and transport all the stormwater in the city, without addressing the amount of water that enters the system. Simply increasing the size of the infrastructure requires larger and larger systems as development and storm frequency/intensity increase with climate change. The map on shows the levels of contamination for 2013. The tests were taken after the completion of the second phase and the large pipeline shown in the image on the right. The map shows that the system has made an improvement to the water quality but the water is still far from safe.
Images: taken from the stakeholder kickoff meeting on March 11, 2014
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Add r e s s i n g D e n s i t y
Image: taken from the stakeholder kickoff meeting on March 11, 2014
Through analysis the city has realized that it needs to address runoff before it reaches the stormwater system, but the strategies and techniques used were developed for the suburbs. Providence is a dense city, specifically in the Fox Point neighborhood, where multi-unit houses occupy typically less than two thousand square feet. The design needs to think and act on a localized scale that addresses the specific problems that homeowners face in trying to improve the system.
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Image: en.wikipedia.org
vs.
43,560 sq.ft. Proposed lot size
2,000 sq.ft.
Average lot size in Providence 95
Providence’s b u i ld i n g c o d e
In response to the need for change before water hits the stormwater system, new provisions are being inserted into the building code. The proposed code address the lack of pervious surfaces by mandating less paved surfaces for different residential zones, however, the code does not give flexibility or alternative solutions for increasing permeability on homeowners properties. Tax incentives and changes in zoning help encourage homeowners to participate in the system.
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Amendments to Building Code 2014 G. Impervious Surface Coverage 3. To reduce impervious surface in the city a range of strategies will need to be deployed, with each responding to the respective parameters of the neighborhood. These strategies can take on different dimensions but their basic tactic remains the same these include: a. Detention/Retention Ponds Stormwater is channeled to the basin through grading or piping and allowed to hold water either for a short period of time (detention ponds) or for a long period of time (retention ponds). b. Bioswales Stormwater moves through a gently sloped swale that removes silt and pollution through slowing the water. c. Infiltration Trenches Stormwater flows to the trench and the larger particle size allows water to fill the trench quickly and then slowly infiltrate into the groundwater. The subsurface layer under a driveway can serve as in infiltration trench, but special care should be taken to grade the subsurface away from foundations. d. Permeable Pavements As stormwater flows across the surface of the pavement it can move through into the subsurface and be allowed to infiltrate. These different applications should be incorporated into sites to take the strain off the main stormwater network. 97
A q u eo u s activism st o rmwat er t r eat m ent fo r th e p e o p l e - b y th e p e o pl e
This sections includes excerpts from the booklet that accompanied the pamphlet. The book further explored how to tackle stormwater within someone’s backyard and beyond. This project is a catalyst for a larger integrated system that can have huge implications in Providence and can serve as a model for other cities around the country and the globe.
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time 99
Residential to Street-System Treating stormwater can be beautiful and dynamic. It does not have to be swept away and kept under the streets. Water is necessary for people, wildlife and vegetation. By allowing water to filter itself through a natural filter, the water is cleaner and the nutrients are able to be absorbed into the system rather than exported out to pollute the bay. Bioswales clean the water and provide an every changing palette of plants and animals for everyone who walks by. Adding a bioswale helps clean the water and provides a home for local wildlife.
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
Flow Chart The pamphlet is the beginning of a process that initiates change. The following steps do not need to include everyone in the neighborhood but rather those that are passionate about making a change and taking action.
Pamphlet
Neighborhood Activism Ignited
Community Meeting
Neighborhood Starts Project
Catalyst for other Neighborhoods time
F r o m A q u e o u s A c t i v i s m : s t o r m w a t e r t r e a t m e n t f o r t h e people - by the people
S t e p s t o Ta k e Changing the existing stormwater system can start with an individual homeowner making the decision to clean and filter stormwater on their property. This can become the catalyst for other neighbors to follow, and as more people join the system the better and more efficient it works. The process is not linear or beholden to any formalized steps, but this booklet represents one way people can tackle the problem.
Water Test
Breaking the ground
Talking with Neighbors
Recognition by the City
Neighborhood Block Party
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
Incorporation into the City System
W a t e r Te s t Test how water moves on your site. Take a gallon of water and pour it on different materials around your yard. Track where the water goes and how fast it moves. Does the water run off quickly or is it absorbed into the ground? Which direction is the surface pitched? Does the water run to the left or right? Answering these questions can start to give you an understanding of how the surface dictates where water currently moves on site.
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
Brick
Lawn
Concrete
Asphalt
Watershed Mapping
Blackstone River-West River to Peters River
The watershed can be understood on a large regional scale or at the zoomed-in site scale. Tracking the way water moves on the driveway lets us read: depressions, ridges and slope. Water always finds the lowest elevation and by watching it move over the surface we can track the macro and micro-topography.
Miller River
Clear River Branch River Blackstone River
Ten Mile River
Chepachet River
Woonasquatucket River Moshassuck River
Regulating & Moswansicut Reservoirs Ponagansett & Barden Reservoirs
Pocassett River
Barrington & Warren Rivers Palmer River
Scituate River
Seekonk & Providence Rivers
Pawtuxet River Mainstem
North Branch Pawtuxet River Flat River Reservoir Upper Moosup River Greenwich Bay
South Branch Pawtucket River
Mount Hope Bay Upper Narragansett Bay
Upper East Passage
Big River
Hunt River
Upper West Passage
Upper Wood River Lower West Passage Queen River
Lower East Passage
Sakonnet River
Pottaquamscutt River
Lower Wood River Beaver River
Saugatucket River Chipuxet River
Upper Pawcatuck River
Wading River
Point Judith Pond Southwest Coastal Waters
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
Coastal Aquidneck
Upper Driveway
Upper East
Upper West Winter Ice Fracture
Western Edge Central Flow
Central Drive Spring Upheaval
Lower East
Lower West
F r o m A q u e o u s A c t i v i s m : s t o r m w a t e r t r e a t m e n t f o r t h e people - by the people Street Overflow
Existing Filtration
Currently when it rains the water is moved quickly over pavement through subtle grading and into storm drains. The road is crowned to funnel water off its surface as quickly as possible. Moving water out of the roadway is critical to car safety and should not be changed, however, there are other places that can be opened up to allow the water to be slowed, filtered and absorbed. The diagrams show how water currently moves into the stormwater system in storm events and how if the water quantity is reduced the system will not have to override and dump waste into the bay.
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
Possible Filtration Solution
This scenario looks at bioswales that connect homeowner properties with the road network as a place for infiltration and filtration. These spaces can become extensions of the house and community spaces - new shared spaces. The spaces would also provide habitat for wildlife and increase biodiversity for the neighborhood.
F r o m A q u e o u s A c t i v i s m : s t o r m w a t e r t r e a t m e n t f o r t h e people - by the people
Asphalt
Concrete
Bricks
Porous Asphalt
Open Grids
3.9 (in./hr.) high 0.25
low
60 (in./hr.) low high 0.25
6.1 (in./hr.) low high 0.27
3.9 (in./hr.) moderate low 0.29
4.1 (in./hr.) moderate moderate 0.50
<0.00002 (in./hr.) moderate low 0.97
0.00006 (in./hr.) high low 0.95
Temperature Runoff Coefficient Microbe Potential
The surface material determines whether water will be able to infiltrate into the ground. Pavements are designed to move water quickly off the site, however, this removes water from the natural water cycle until it is dumped into the bay without any filtration. Varied materials can be cut and graded to subtly move and clean water. Sloped paved areas can be coupled with collection points that allow water to move into the ground. Material choices need to consider their use and the way water systems move over or through them.
Infiltration Rate
Surface
Forest Soil
Turf
F r o m A q u e o u s A c t i v i s m : s t o r m w a t e r t r e a t m e n t f o r t h e people - by the people
39%
40%
48%
50% slow
38% 46% slow
Light Clay Loam Clay Loam
slow
35%
Silt Loam
44%
Loam
moderate
33% moderate
43%
28%
22% 40% fast
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
42%
15% 38%
Sandy Loam Fine Sandy Loam
fast
Sand
fast
11% 32% fast
Percolation
Soil Porosity
Soil is often forgotten when we talk about stormwater treatment, but it is the base of the system. Particle size determines the soilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s porosity, the available space for water. Smaller particles have more surface area and thus more porosity, clayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s have as much as 50% porosity. Having a larger porosity allows for more water to be held in the upper soil layers, which can be beneficial or a challenge. Infiltration systems move water through the top layers of the soil to quickly reach the groundwater table, however, water should not move too quickly because fast water movement shortens filtration time.
Soil Capacity
Soils
Heavy Clay Loam
Clay
Fro m Aqueous A ctivism: stormwa ter t re a t me n t f o r t h e p e o p le - b y t h e p e o p le
Littleleaf Linden Sugar Maple
105 lbs. 271 gal. moderate moderate
117 lbs. 447 gal. low slow
112 lbs. 353 gal.
Zelkova
very
Red Maple
fast
208 lbs. 549 gal. moderate
115 lbs. 571 gal.
moderate
Honey Locust London Planetree
very
112 lbs. 492 gal. very fast
172 lbs. 589 gal. very fast
115 lbs. 560 gal. very Green Ash
fast
Norway Maple Callery Pear
fast
426 gal. very fast
152 lbs.
336 gal. very fast
118 lbs.
Stormwater Absorbed Street Tolerance Growth Rate
Plants offer an excellent opportunity to absorb excess water and add habitat spaces for wildlife. Every tree species is unique and has its own benefits; some are tolerant of pollution while others can absorb more water, knowing what characteristics you are looking for is essential in determining what tree will be a good fit. The chart shows recommended street tree species for Providence.
Carbon Sequestration
Street Trees
Flowering Cherry
Additional Resources
http://www.sustainablesites.org/ The Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™) program is an interdisciplinary effort by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the United States Botanic Garden to create voluntary national guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction and maintenance practices. http://depave.org/ Depave promotes the removal of unnecessary pavement from urban areas to create community green spaces and mitigate stormwater runoff. Through community partnerships and volunteer engagement, Depave strives to overcome the social and environmental impacts of pavement with the use of action-oriented educational events, community stewardship, and advocacy to reconnect people with nature and inspire others. Depave is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon. http://www.deq.state.or.us/wq/stormwater/docs/nwr/biofilters.pdf City of Portland’s guide for using Bioswales, Vegetative Buffers, and Constructed Wetlands for reducing, minimizing, or eliminating pollutant discharges to surface waters. http://www.americanrivers.org/ American Rivers is a leading national organization standing up for healthy rivers so our communities can thrive. Through national advocacy, innovative solutions and our growing network of strategic partners, we protect and promote our rivers as valuable assets that are vital to our health, safety and quality of life. Through intensive research, with the Midwestern Environmental Advocates, they created a guide for cities to develop a road map for community based stormwater solutions.
F r o m A q u e o u s A c t i v i s m : s t o r m w a t e r t r e a t m e n t f o r t h e people - by the people
Th e f u t u r e
Transpir Evapo at r
Bioswales
& ion ion at
This perspective looks at how these strategies could be implemented into the Fox Point neighborhood on Armstrong and Thompson Streets. The image shows how the water cycle would be changed through the redesign and how the invisible water system would become visible.
able to absorb up to 1,800 gallons of stormwater
Infiltration
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ation nspir Tra
Street Trees
able to absorb between 300-550 gallons of stormwater
& ion ion at
nspi ra por t
[+] Habitat
[+] Border [+] Outdoor Space Surface Runoff
ion
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R e fl e c t i o n P h a s e Th r e e
This investigation took the basic design strategies created in phase two and discovered a new methodology for conveying that information to the public. The focus of the project was on the creation of a pamphlet, to spark interest, and a booklet, to breakdown how to start. The project tackles a larger scale system problem and addresses it at a localized and individualized scale, to address the big problem and facilitate community involvement. This phase focused on how to distribute complex graphs and text to the public through graphics. Mapping the way other stormwater projects are completed in Providence gave rise to the need for a grassroots strategy. The complicated web of administrators, presidents and boards make it hard to take action, this project does not ignore these complications but it suggests an alternative method for working around the municipal complications. The phase addressed the problems and strategies for the municipal side of stormwater treatment. Rewriting part of the Providence Building Code addresses policy changes that could have a large impact on the overall way stormwater is addressed in Providence. The major takeaway from this phase is the importance of not just solving one aspect of the problem and the need to be nimble and strategic when dealing with these large scale systems.
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Weekly Agenda How can the design be a catalyst for a change in ecological processes and create active community participation with minimal effort, energy and cost? Week Three April 28-May 2 Continue to work on Pamphlet layout Graphic language Imagery Water Test In side-yard demonstrate micro-topography Week Two April 21-25 Review of week: sketched tree effects on driveway Worked on the Web of Projectsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;developed the way that stormwater projects happen in Providence Worked on a diagram about the influence of the project Work on Pamphlet Develop basic principles Research low effort design Trees planted next to driveway Time-based drawings (seasonal change and yearly changes) Cracks in wall Time based drawing (wall slowly breaks apart)
Week One April 14-18 Review of week: Reviewed the current stormwater programs in Providence (examining the new building code, the CSO program and the Stakeholder Presentation) Examined Portland Bioswales in relation to Depave Researched border conditions in other contexts: hedgerows in England, demilitarized zone in Korea Research legislation currently involved Save the Bay Department of Water Management Research methods of top-down approaches Portland Bioswales Pavement to Plazas City Tickets Research methods of bottom -up approaches Depave Parking Day Weed Bombing
PHASE III â&#x20AC;&#x201C; PRESENTATION OUTLINE Aqueous Activism: dissolving property borders through shared agency Urban environments are removed from the vulnerability and powerful dynamism that is present in the natural environment. Rural and suburban areas can no longer be relied upon to provide the ecological function for cities. Simplified urban systems need to be incorporated and expanded to: clean air; filter water; recycle biological waste; and provide habitat for wildlife. This investigation asks how the implementation of design can be used to help urban inhabitants extend agency past their property boundaries. The project challenges the current top-down approach to stormwater management in the city and proposes an activism from homeowners. Urban Environment removed vulnerability and dynamism 50% world population Rural and suburban areas cannot provide ecological function for cities Clean Air Filter water Recycle biological waste Provide habitat Ecological processes connect people to environment give agency Activation of the urban environment through cracks in borders How do we better integrate complex ecologies into urban environments, and furthermore how do we encourage the inhabitants of cities to be responsible and integral to the process? Thesis Question: How can the process of design, help urban inhabitants extend agency past their property boundaries and restore ecological function in the neighborhood? Phase III How it currently works Web of Projects Stormwater as a problem currently Contamination in the bay Flooding in the streets New opportunity to challenge the current methodology Medium pamphlet and booklet Flow Chart Residential scale needed Education identify Possible Design Solutions Transition Taking the plan from centralized/decentralized Catalyst for change throughout the city Two systems can synchronize Changing the building code Working together to create the whole Completed Tunnel and Perspective
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C oncl u sion
T
his thesis began with the question of how to integrate complex ecology into the urban environment and encourage inhabitants to be engaged and integral to the process. The thesis was structured around three phases, with each phase having its own question and line of inquiry that would build upon the previous phases. The first phase set out to understand how the community recognizes and connects to ecological process in their neighborhood. The second phase focuses on how ecological awareness could be experienced on a daily basis through a walk or a site investigation. The final phase examined how political boundaries impact ecological processes. Because each investigation was conducted at a different scale, it
was difficult to determine overlapping findings from each study. In order to delve into each process beyond a superficial reading, all scales need to be analyzed in conjunction with one another. Knowing what scale to work at is large part of design - it requires a thorough understanding of the problem, before making assumptions about the solution. Carl Steinitz, a professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at Harvard proposes that large-scale design requires strategy, the middle scale deals with tactics, 119
and at the small-scale addresses details.1 This simplification of how designers operate is helpful in understanding the basic principle that scale, either micro or macro, influences the types of processes one can work with. Analysis at different scales changes the way decisions are made and ultimately the end design. For example, understanding water movement changes dramatically between the regional scale and the individual site scale. Both are accurate ways of mapping and analyzing the site but each emphasizes a different factors. At the regional scale overall geology and topography determines water flow. At the site scale micro-topography mainly, spot grades, and surface materiality regulate the movement of water. This thesis started with the question of how to engage people in ecological systems. The investigation examined mapping precedents, such as Reboot, Redraw: Massachusetts. This project redrew political borders, but the audience of this project remained within the design and planning field. While this method of changing maps through illustration works it does not have the impact or scope of the thesis. This thesis challenges the method designers’ use to present ecology at the human scale and places the emphasis on translating large complex systems into digestible material for the individual to initiate local activism and value stormwater as a shared resource. 1
Steinitz, Carl. On Scale and Complexity and the Need for Spatial Analysis.
PHASE ONE
P
hase one began with an analysis of boundaries through different ecological and cultural systems, within the East Side of Providence. The overarching investigation looked at borders and boundaries through their different adjacencies and relationships to one another. The relationships between these systems — water, vegetation, soil, surface, land use and neighborhood identity — helped generate a set of parameters that characterized the different neighborhood typologies within the East Side. The typologies helped create a matrix that could categorize the places that had the highest need for improvement. The fluid and pervasive nature of water became a focus for the investigation. The movement of water through the regional watershed, a neighborhood blocks and localized movement through a soil profile, operate by the same principles but with different hierarchies. Typologies were determined by categorizing locations based on their response to ecological and cultural systems. By the end of the first phase the characteristics and framework for each typology, Old Settlement, Collegiate Expanse and Portuguese Patio, redirected the focus to the Portuguese Patio or Fox Point Neighborhood and addressing water as the main ecological process. The Fox Point Neighborhood was selected due to its density, cultural traditions and historical relationship to the waterfront. This first phase had too broad of a scope and was not able to zero-in and focus in detail on the complexity. Any location has thousands of complex interactions that allow it to function, without narrowing down the investigation the project remained ungrounded and not particular. In laying out the next phase, the site and scope of each drawing became more specific and precise.
PHASE TWO
T
he second phase focused on addressing hydrology in the Fox Point community. The investigation zoomed into a four-block site centered on Armstrong and Thompson Street to study the way water moved between private properties and the public domain. The movement of water across property boundaries and political borders became a potential unifying process for the neighborhood.
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Providence’s water treatment system is a combined stormwater system, which means that during storm events, if the system reaches capacity, the excess effluent, both rainwater and sewage, inevitably spill into the bay. Moving water quickly through this cycle without the infiltration or filtration creates a linear sequence that has only one mode of operation; A to B and if one element within the
sequence fails, the whole system fails. Ninety percent of the surfaces in Fox Point is impervious. This high percentage means that most of the water is transported to the city’s water treatment system and is unable to infiltrate into the ground. By looking at the potential space between properties and between private and public space, new strategies for treating and collecting stormwater began to emerge from the research. This phase tested models to explore new possibilities in terms of location and design strategies. The models allowed for fast decisions, quick changes and an abstracted method of viewing the parcels without the buildings. The models showed that Interstate-195 becomes a large barrier between the neighborhood and India Point Park, for both the circulation of water and people. At the scale of the East Side of Providence the large impervious cut and large scale of the highway became the predominant element in the model. Zooming-in to residential properties illustrated the division between land and water was then reflected at the individualized scale of everyone’s backyard. Large stretches of impervious surfaces spread from one house to another until a shift in the property lines left a lot or space that could not be built upon. At these shifts opportunistic pervious spaces started to emerge. In thinking about the complex relationships between private-private, private-commercial and private-public boundaries new ways of thinking about how to intervene in the neighborhood became evident; it was revealed that by encouraging the individual to take ownership of their own neighborhood, the project could have a large impact on the neighborhood and the city by decentralizing the system. Homeowners would have a vested interest in the system, it would become part of the neighborhood identity. The phase concluded that runoff is a shared resource that the public currently does not appreciate or know about, but that it could be used to create a new dialogue around resources and responsibility for everyone — designers, government officials and the community — that challenges the current model of civic involvement and proposes a new methodology of system design that engages the individual.
PHASE THREE
T
he last phase of this thesis designed alterative strategies to implement the designs developed in phase two and responds to inadequacies of the current Stormwater Management Plan in Providence. The investigation began with an analysis of the way projects currently operate in the city. Through the study it was revealed that the city needs more projects that generated by the people who use the site daily in order to encourage ownership of managing stormwater. Through mapping the web of players involved with the stormwater projects Providence is currently working on, patterns began to emerge. A critical finding was that com-
munity involvement is not an integral component in the projects. By not including those individuals who will use the design process, individual’s abilities are not appreciated or realized. In the field of landscape architecture community engagement is starting to dictate which projects are funded. The recent Rebuild by Design competition that looked at developing new strategies for coastal communities after Hurricane Sandy, required that each design group work with the community they were designing for. (Collaborating with the people the design is intended for creates a stronger project and guarantees that not only homeowners will adopt it, but also the collective community.
Image: taken from the stakeholder kickoff meeting on March 11, 2014
The third phase challenged the current strategies laid out in Stormwater Treatment Plan. The plan uses strategies that were developed and designed for suburban developments where large portions of people’s backyards can be used for stormwater infiltration. However, Providence is not a suburban development. The density of people and housing requires other strategies to be put in place to treat and manage stormwater with less space. Suburban models cannot simply be inserted into an urban context. As a critique of the designs, innovative new strategies were developed to allow for the same ecological processes as in the suburban model. The edits strengthen the Providence Building Code by adding flexibility and adaptability to the code. The Providence Building Code is currently being rewritten and the strategic edits would expand the possible ways designers, officials and homeowners can confront stormwater management in an integrated manner.
T
his pamphlet is the catalyzing resource to begin the dialogue about bridging private and public agency in improving stormwater management systems. The first step in this process is educating the homeowner about how improving water management strategies impacts personal interests and benefits the user. At the conclusion of the first phase, on-site research demonstrated that a significant percentage of property owners actively use the limited pervious surfaces along their driveways to cultivate grapes and other edible crops. These “garden” parcels are vulnerable to toxic runoff due to their proximity to the driveways. This presented an opportunity, or a medium through which to introduce a method for maintaining and improving a privatized system, for the benefit of the homeowner. People have the right to do what the want on their own land, so the pamphlet proved to be an effective strategy for encouraging privatized change without imposing municipal regulations.
Image: en.wikipedia.org
aries. Often these gardens are located at the edge of the property lines. The act as markers of boundary, but in effect operate as a buffer more than a rigid property line, unlike a fence or a wall. This became an opportune venue for revealing how stormwater management is both a individual and communal issue that transcends boundary. Neighbors ultimately negotiate where one property starts and the other ends – through the lens of the city it is a clear line drawn on a zoning plan, but in reality people accept perforations in this line. An overhanging tree limb onto someone else’s property may be acceptable because it ultimately can benefit both stakeholders, or it presents no immediate harm to either property. The challenge arises when homeowners have different values; the pamphlet tries to find common ground between interested parties and recognition of mutual benefits. The pamphlet and booklet did not dictate methodologies for how the project would need to be implemented but rather strategies and an insight into how management projects typically happen and how the existing model could be challenged. The pamphlet and booklet were coupled with a proposal for additions to the current draft plan of the Providence Building Code, with the understanding that change cannot only happen on one front but that multiple tools and agencies would need to be utilized to make a difference. This thesis began with a desire to integrate complex ecology into the urban environment and encourage the inhabitants to be engaged and integral to the process. The strategy to complete the thesis did not follow the original map laid out, but in the end challenged the original question and the typical methodologies designers use to complete projects. By going beyond typical gestures of green space (parks and riverfronts) and challenging the public-private interface this thesis moved the dialogue of large system design away from city planners and the municipality to prove that individuals can play a large role in the success (or failure) of these large system designs. Ecology is all around us. It is a system that extends from the privacy of our homes to vast expanses in the wilderness. It is not just found in national parks or rural settings. It is part of every place we occupy. And it is not just someone else’s property; it is a shared resource that we need to appreciate and understand. If we really want to address ecology as landscape architects, we should not allow the trends of climate change to dictate, or steer the conversation away from the fundamental elements of ecology that exist at the scale of the sidewalk or backyard. Experiencing ecological phenomenon can be the platform to facilitate social interchange or interactions that tie communities together.
The secondary intention of the pamphlet and stormwater management manual is to bring awareness to the way that private property owners share bound121
Bi b liograp h y
Born, Megan and Helene Furján and Lily Jencks and Phillip Crosby. Dirt. Philadelphia. 2014. CGP Grey, posted by Robert Krulwich, ‘Don’t Touch Me,’ said Canada. ‘I won’t!’ said the USA. So they Move 20 Feet Apart. Radiolab, podcast, April 25, 2014. Del, Tredici P. Wild urban plants of the Northeast : a field guide. Ithaca. 2014. Folke, Carl, Steve Carpenter, Thomas Elmqvist, Lance Gunderson, Cs Holling, and Brian Walker. “Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations.” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 31, no. 5 (2002): 437. Gehl, Jan. Cities for people. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010. Groneworld, Nathanial. “Environmental Destruction, Chaos Bleeding Across Haitian Border.” New York Times, December 4, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/ gwire/2009/12/14/14greenwire-environmental-destruction-chaos-bleeding-acros-35779.html?pagewanted=all (accessed January 2014) Hillier, Bill and Julienne Hanson. The social logic of space. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire. 1984. Karimipour, Behnam. “Floating infrastructures : architecture beyond borders : united points.” MA Thesis. MIT. 2013. Leopold, Aldo, and Charles Walsh Schwartz. A Sand County almanac, and sketches here and there. 1987 ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 1949. Myers, William. Bio design : nature, science, creativity. New York. 2014. Salunkhe, Meetal G. “Rediscovering The American Melting Pot: Exploring Ethnic (Hispanic) Landscape Preference And Values In Urban Parks.” MLA Thesis. PENN State. 2008. Steinitz, Carl . “On Scale and Complexity and the Need for Spatial Analysis.” Lecture, Specialist Meeting on Spatial Concepts in GIS and Design from ERSI, Santa Barbara, California, December 15, 2008. T, Richard T. Land mosaics : the ecology of landscapes and regions. Cambridge [England. 1995. Waldheim, Charles. The landscape urbanism reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. Weisman, Alan. The world without us. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
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