EDGELESS
A TYPOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO WATER MANAGEMENT IN GEORGETOWN, GUYANA RACHEL MONIKA KALLICHARAN
Ed g e l es s A Ty po l o g i c al Re sp on s e t o Wat e r M an a g e me nt in Ge o r ge t o w n , G u y an a
A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in par tial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture in the Depar tment of Ar t, Architecture, Ar t and Planning of the School of Architecture and Interior Design by by Rachel Kallicharan Bachelor of Ar ts in Architectural Studies Boston University, 2015 Committee Chair: Michael McIntur f, M.Arch Committee Member: Thomas Bible, M.C.E
© RACHEL KALLICHARAN
Copyright, 2020
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A B S T RA C T
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This proposal re-choreographs the urban fabric of Georgetown through a series of inhabitable infrastructures. This network of interventions operates to promote a denser, ever-evolving and sociable Georgetown. With the introduction of a new typology of infrastructure, this proposal will redefine the way that the city responds to the effects of rising sea levels. In the pursuit of an intervention that sufficiently protects the city from inundation, strategies will include the exploration of several scenarios which aim to respond to one or more pressures. The most successful explorations included one driven by canals, another reintroducing mangroves a third which elevates the street-scape thus connecting the city via bridges. The design drivers deemed most critical to address include: flooding, culture, infrastructure, ecosystem and energy. The scenarios will be pushed to their illogical conclusions in an attempt to exhaust their ability to resolve their respective pressures. The ultimate intervention will be a purposeful combination of the three; its effectiveness will be measured by how much it addresses the five pressures. The resulting proposal consists of infrastructural elements lined and fortified by urban spaces designed to embrace and absorb water as opposed to the existing that attempts to reject water. As evident in urban centers all around the world, the strategy of resisting the sea is a decreasingly substantial solution moving forward. Consequently, the new city is a collage of negotiated moments rather than hard edges.
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re sil ience - n - the capacity to recover quickly
nfrastructure is the skeleton which gives a city shape, function and order. It includes structures, networks, services and facilities that support the growth of a city. Georgetown, Guyana is a coastal city that operates with the same infrastructure today that was established by the Dutch upon colonization in the early 17th century. With a coastal elevation below sea level, the city is at risk of suffering severe impacts of climate change. The critical systems that currently protect the city from the sea include the sea wall, canals, sluices, and a massive water conservancy. Although this network previously sufficed to protect the city, it is no longer an appropriate strategy in the battle against rising sea levels.
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A C K N O WL ED G M EN T S
This thesis could not have been possible without...
Senita + Rebecca + Sheldon for everything Tom for endless wisdom and patience Michael for constantly reassuring me Justin for the past four years Caroline for being a sister #MArchIsforlife
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C ONTENTS
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IN TR ODUC TION
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ABS TRAC T
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A C KN O W L E D G MEN TS
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THE GAR D E N C IT Y
IN HA B ITA BL E IN F RA STR UC TUR E
PA S T + P R E S E N T + F U T UR E
PRE CE DE NTS
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M A PPI N G T H E C I T Y T HE LAY OF T HE LAN D
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ESTA BL ISHING A N EW C ON TEXT PRO CE SS + DE SI GN
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I M A G E I N D EX
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SEL EC TED R EA DIN G S
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I N TRODUCTION
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ccording to the UN Habitat Global Report of Human Settlement 2011, there could be as many as 200 million people displaced by climate change by 2050.1 The UN estimates that there are 3,351 cities in low elevation coastal zones around the world (many of which are in developing countries).2 For some communities, climate change can threaten not only their way of life but more importantly their survival. Georgetown, Guyana is one of those cities at risk of being destroyed. Nearly 90% of Guyana’s population lives on land below sea level.3 Such a condition is far from ideal for human settlement. However, the Guyanese have inhabited this land since the early 16th century; occupying land that frequently floods is not such an anomaly. Original settlements were built on naturally higher topography however as the population grew, water management became vital to master. In the past century, as climate change has worsened, even more pressure has been applied to the city’s urban water system. Georgetown, with just over 240,000 inhabitants, is Guyana’s largest city and at risk of destruction if not equipped for worsening climate conditions.4
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Fig. 1.03
white sand belt
rain forest
interior highlands
savannah
coastal belt
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The country of Guyana lies in northeast South America. It is bordered by Venezuela to the west, Suriname to the east and Brazil to the south. The name Guyana is derived from the Amerindian word ‘Guiana’ meaning land of many waters describing the nation quite accurately. Guyana’s largest bodies of water include the Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo and Corentyne rivers. The land itself is composed of five geographical zones: the white sand belt, the high savannah uplands, the thick, hilly tropical forest, the interior highlands and the coastal belt which is nearly all cultivated land. Amerindian tribes reside in the interior. Much of the land is also virgin territory protected by the EPA. While the country is 83,000 square miles, the majority of the population resides on the coast due to its economic centrality, driven by rice fields, sugarcane fields, and fishing in the city of Georgetown.5 A 283 mile long stone seawall lines the coast and protects from flooding during high tides. However, as rising levels steadily increase, the seawall is beginning to fail to withstand the strength and current of the Atlantic Ocean. The natural response might be for occupants of the coastline to retreat further inland. But, to the south of the city are sugarcane fields and tropical forest, some of which (371,000 hectares) is dedicated to preservation and scientific study of its unique ecology.6 Therefore, residents of this low-lying region must learn how to adapt to changing conditions, beginning with its infrastructure and surrounding architecture. As the earth heats up, sea levels will only continue to rise. Georgetown has faced inundation issues since the conception of the city due to the topography of the region, but rising sea levels will only further exacerbate its ability to successfully react to the water. What does a city whose livelihood depends on water do when rising sea levels force it to change its way of life?
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Chapter Two will introduce the city and thus establish an understanding how it came to be as well as its existing infrastructure in an attempt to understand why it no longer functions as intended. Chapter Three delves into the infrastructure of several other cities facing a similar issue as well as proposals for how to manage water-related issues. This shall include both precedents and antecedents. While it is important to dissect the inner workings of cities efficiently dealing with inundation, it is just as valuable to learn to from cities that are failing to protect their land from the effects of rising sea levels. Chapter Four outlines the design process which preceded the ultimate proposal. This included the exploration of several urban frameworks. The first proposal was driven by the already existing network of canals; however it proposes a more integrated network, connecting all of them and also proposing inhabitable bridges. The canals operate to carry water from the land out towards the sluices, thus being released into the Demerara River and the Atlantic Ocean. The bridges become nuclei of activity as it connects strips of lands together but more importantly serves as a pause in one’s journey throughout the city. The bridges will also form the locus of concentration for social and commercial interaction among the zones they connect. The second proposal was inspired by the existing but deteriorating system of mangroves which is nature’s way of protecting the coastline from flooding. The dilemma is that mangroves, which possess the ability to move landward as sea levels rise, have begun to die off thus leaving the coastline unprotected. Mangroves cover about 290 km of Guyana’s 430 km coast. Could a coast defined by a woven network of mangroves and buildings help the city respond to shifting sea levels? Lastly, the third proposal delves into the idea of the street-scape shifted up a level and elevated in order to avoid a flooded ground scape. This intervention comes at a price as it radically changes the way of life of Georgetown residents. It is mandatory to bear in mind that the rising sea levels and tidal flooding will inexorably change life along the coast.
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Each scenario aims to relieve one or more pressures which the city is currently facing, all at varying degrees. The aim is not to equally address all five pressures (flooding, infrastructure, culture, ecosystem, and energy), rather to produce an intervention that serves the city the longest while protecting the well-being of the residents. The five pressures are not to be thought of independently as they are all interconnected. The residents of Georgetown face similar pressures as the mangroves which line the coast - rising sea levels are threatening their way of life. Just as mangroves gather nutrients from the sun, serve as a shelter for a plethora of organisms and possess the ability to adapt to changing conditions, could the people of Georgetown operate in a similar manner in the pursuit of survival? Sustainability could be defined as: the ability to maintain - for today and tomorrow. Could it be possible for Georgetown to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs? The appropriate answer today may not be the appropriate answer in fifty years or a hundred years. The ultimate proposal will be one that can serve the city far into the future as sea levels continue to rise and natural resources continue to deplete. Strategies employed can be applied to cities in similar socioeconomic and geographic circumstances. This thesis rechoreographs the urban fabric of Georgetown thus shifting the way people move and behave in the city. Quite often the built environment is perceived as static and permanent - this must be challenged in order to forge way for a new urban framework that is built to withstand the test Fig. 1.04 of time and evolve.
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Chapter 01 1 UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), ‘The Impacts of Climate-Change Upon Urban Areas’ Earthscan, London, 2011, p. 85. 2 International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, ‘World Disaster Reduction Campaign 2010-2011’ United Nations 2010 (https://unisdr.org/files/14030_ FAQscampaignpresskit.pdf), retrieved 01 January 2020. 3 Juanita de Barros, Order and Place in a Colonial City. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, 12. 4 CIA. Accessed November 1, 2019. https://www.cia. gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_ gy.html 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.
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Fig. 2.01
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th e garden city
Past + Present + Future
Pre-Colonization
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t is suspected that the first human inhabitants of Guyana entered via the highlands during the first millennium BCE. Christopher Columbus first sighted the Guyana coast during his voyage in 1498.1 At the time of Columbus’ initial sighting and voyage to Guyana, the country’s most prominent inhabitants were the Arawak tribe which occupied most of the coastal belt and the Carib tribe in the interior. These semi-nomadic tribes thrived predominantly on hunting and gathering. They also practiced shifting agriculture, a system in which a plot of land is cultivated for a short period of time then abandoned and thus allowed to revert to its original state of vegetation and ultimately preserving its long-term fertility. Columbus did not pursue the colonization of the country.2 Post-Colonization The Dutch were the first European settlers of Guyana, beginning with establishing trade posts along the periphery of major rivers in 1580.3 They aligned themselves with the Amerindians in order to fortify their defense against the Spanish as well as supervise trade and maintain friendly relations. It was at the turn of the sixteenth century that the Dutch West India Company increased its efforts to colonize and exploit the land for its rich resources. Acknowledging the land’s wealth of sugarcane, rice, vegetables, fruits, and minerals the Dutch imported West Africans for slave labor to reap Guyana’s benefits. Under this new plantation based economy, the Dutch and the Amerindians’ relationship began to evolve as the Dutch recruited the native peoples to capture runaway slaves, destroy maroon villages (communities of captured African slaves), and assist in disassembling slave revolts. Hierarchically speaking, at this time, Amerindian peoples were considered a superior race to the Africans and their interactions with them in this plantation society only further enforced their perception of Africans as inferior to them.4 By the turn of the eighteenth century, the Dutch began to sprawl south towards the fertile soils of the estuaries and coastal mudflats. They also observed that the coastal belt was vulnerable
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to erosion and flooding during high tides. As innovation leaders in flood mitigation strategies, the Dutch recognized the land of Guyana to be rather similar to their own and thus introduced a typology of infrastructure previously nonexistent in Guyana - a network of canals,and sluices (gates used to manage the flow of water) to provide drainage as the land exists approximately 3 feet below high tide level.5 Initial settlements were primarily located along river banks, but, as the population began to increase, houses began to line the coastal belt of what is currently known as Georgetown. It is this population growth that spurred the fortification of sea defenses. The earliest known canals run east and parallel to the Demerara River. They were dug by West African slaves and the soil that was excavated was consequently used to build a dam between the canals. The canals also served as routes for cargo. To obtain irrigation water from the inland regions of the country, coastal plantation plots were planned to be generally rectangular.5 The front faced the river or the sea while the back had the wet savannah or a creek as its boundary. Parallel canals
Fig. 2.02
on the two sides ran from the back lands to the sea or river and emptied through sluices.6 Smaller canals cut across the breadth of the plantation to connect to the main parallel canals, and the flow of water through them was also controlled by smaller kokers. This was the start of a soon to be rather complex irrigation and drainage system which still serves the city today. Indentured servant labor was responsible for the construction of this infrastructure. These servants were primarily African and East Indian. For every square mile of land which was used for sugar-cane cultivation, about 49 miles of drainage and 16 miles of irrigation trenches were dug. In the process of digging canals and trenches on the sugar plantations, over 100 million tons of earth were excavated. In 1746, the Dutch made the coastal land of the Demerara River available to British immigrants. They were attracted by the fertile soil and opportunity for land ownership. By 1760, the population comprised of a majority of British immigrants.6 Nearly two decades later, internal affairs were dominated and
controlled by the British despite the colony belonging to the Dutch. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (primarily between 1792 and 1815), Guyana changed hands between the Dutch, French, and British. When the American Revolution commenced in 1776, the French aligned themselves with the Americans in the battle against the British. Although the Dutch considered themselves neutral at the time, they were supplying goods to the Americans and therefore provoking the British to seize Dutch colonies, not only out of retaliation but also to prevent from being used as ports for shipping goods to the Americans. In January 1782, the French forced the British to surrender the colonies. When the Anglo-French war ended in 1783, the colonies were returned to the Dutch. They picked up right where they left off and continued on their mission to ensure adequate drainage. They dedicated efforts towards a more extensive network of canals and small sluices. After Britain seized the Essequibo-Demerara region in 1796, the country experienced another influx of settlers from
Barbados and they were given land grants along the coast to cultivate sugar, cotton, and coffee.7 They allowed existing settlers to retain their property but they assumed control over the Dutch West India Company. Sugar was deemed the most profitable and currently still is. By 1831, Berbice (currently a region to the east of present Georgetown) and the United Colony of Essequibo and Demerara were united to form British Guiana. In 1855, the United Kingdom’s Combined Courts allocated a sum of $135,000 to be used for sea wall defense. In the early 19th century, sugar estates were able to obtain water during periods of low rainfall from a natural conservancy on their southern boundary. The concept of a permanent conservancy was developed by Dr. Michael McTurk, a member of the Georgetown Town Council, and based on his plan, an Ordinance was passed in 1828 to build an earthen dam to trap water in the East Demerara conservancy. The East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) exists to this day and is responsible for the primary method of water storage.8
Fig. 2.03 36
Conception of the City Prior to being named Georgetown by the British (in honor of King George III), the city was named Starbroek by the Dutch. Between 1783 and 1800, smaller towns began to appear along the coastal belt. One of the most prominent was called New Town and originally established by the French in 1782. American traders established administrative offices by the river as well as a wharf where American trading ships discharged and loaded goods. The city inevitably grew to be a major industrial hub for the country. After 1796, the British dedicated a great deal of effort into road-building. Estate owners began to divide and sell plots of their lands thus leading to the urban scape which currently still exists. Thomas Cumming, a member of the Court of Policy sold off lots along the bank of the Demerara River to merchants seeking property for storehouses.9 During this time, some canals were filled in to form streets thus contributing to a larger street grid allowing for accelerated city growth. From here, Georgetown began to grow rapidly and emerged as the country’s urban center.
Fig. 2.04
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Fig. 2.05
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Independence Guyana gained its independence from Britain in 1966. The first elected government, formed by the People’s Progessive Party (PPP) was led by Cheddi Jagan. On February 23rd, 1970 Guyana was proclaimed a cooperative republic within the Commonwealth.10 Forbes Burnham retained his position as Prime Minister and his authority expanded soon after as he became executive president in 1980. This decade was particularly tumultuous due to decreased demand for bauxite and sugar thus devastating the economy as well as deterioration of essential public services. When Burnham passed away at the end of the decade, Hugh Desmond Hoyte replaced him, denouncing communism and promising reform. Soon after him, Jagan became president advocating for more of a democracy and economic reform as the country’s poverty conditions worsened. In 2005, a devastating flood killed dozens of people as well as destroyed immense amounts of rice and sugarcane crops which are major economic drivers. As of the most recent national election in May 2015, the presidency went to former general David Granger who is currently still President.11
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Economy of the City Despite the coastal plain only comprising of 5 percent of the country’s land suitable for cultivation of crops, agriculture is Guyana’s chief economic driver. The agricultural sector faced a number of obstacles as the coastal belt lies about 3 feet below the high tide sea level and only thrives due to the country’s network of canals and sluices. Sugar and rice drive the nation’s economy generating the most revenue. Sugar is primarily produced for export. Rice is primarily consumed domestically. Other significant crops include wheat, bananas, coconuts, coffee, cocoa, citrus fruits, pepper, and pumpkin. Fishing and livestock are also vital to the economy. In terms of the future, another economic driver is predicted to be oil in the coming decade. The economy appears to have a bright future before it. As of April 2019, oil was found just off the shore of Georgetown. However, Venezuela and Guyana are currently disputing which nation the oil belongs to. The Guyanese government, under its agreement with Exxon, expects to receive roughly half the cash flow from this oil production. Economists predict that the country’s current gross domestic product will at least triple in the year five years. The country’s oil reserves are estimated to be nearly 5 billion barrels. “One way to grasp the magnitude of these discoveries is that in 10 years, Guyana, with a population of slightly less than 800,000, could pump nearly a barrel of oil per person each day— more production on a per capita basis than Saudi Arabia today.” “Each Guyanese is going to be a U.S.-dollar millionaire, or worth that, in a few years. Of course, the spectrum of disasters linked to sudden oil windfalls, from Angola to Nigeria to next-door Venezuela, suggests otherwise. The oil curse hangs over Guyana, with risks of inflation, corruption and inequality, among other things.”
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Fig. 2.06
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Until now, Guyana has never produced oil. In the past it has traded its rice crop for fuel from Venezuela. Venezuela on the other hand has dabbled in the oil business for quite a while now, which is why it is going head to head with Guyana for ownership rights to the new discovery. If all goes well (politically as well as economically), Guyana is in line to produce more than $6 billion in royalties and taxes annually by the end of the 2020s. Although a deviation from renewable energy resources, this new discovery could provide the necessary funding for a new infrastructure which the coastal belt so desperately needs.
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Existing Infrastructure Upon conception of the city, the Dutch established a unique network of infrastructure which worked in tandem to attempt to protect the city from inundation. However, in the year 2020, this network no longer functions as the Dutch had intended. Georgetown’s aquastructure is composed of its 280 mile long sea wall, sluices which terminate at the mouth of the Demerara River and Atlantic Ocean, countless canals of all sizes and East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) to the southeast of the city (figures in clockwise order starting from upper left). The largest and most financially straining of all infrastructure is the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) to the southeast of Georgetown. The EDWC stores water during the dry season for irrigation and household use. It doubly functions as a flood control mechanism in the wet season. It essentially acts as a flood control reservoir. It is bound on 3 sides from a dam embankment approximately 67 km in total length and composed of clay, earth, and peat. It works in tandem with 5 primary drainage relief canals. It covers an area of 571 km2 (an area about 3.5 times bigger than Washington D.C.) and has the capacity to store 66 trillion gallons of water.14 With help from the network of sluices and canals, the conservancy helps drain excess water from the land back into the sea. The drainage primarily functions by gravity and is supplemented by pumps. Due to increasing sea level rise, the water can no longer be drained by gravity alone.
Fig. 2.13
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How EDWC Operates
nal
EDWC network
annadale waterpath
rainfall inflows
mahaica river
sluice
lamaha ca
demerera river
tidal boundary
Fig. 2.14
Location of EDWC
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Failure of Existing Infrastructure In January 2005, the nation experienced unprecedented rainfall consequently flooding low-lying properties for nearly three weeks. In some households, the water level was nearly chest height. During the storm, the dam did not breach however it brought the vulnerability of the systems to the nation’s attention as another comparable storm would essentially break the system altogether. Since the flood of 2005, the government has taken measures to reinforce the dam and well as rehabilitate a number of sluices. With 80% of the nation’s population occupying low-lying coastal regions, rising sea levels will inevitably lead to the flooding of countless homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools. Currently, coastal areas range from 19.7 inches to 39.4 inches below sea level. In the event of high spring tides, the Ministry of Public Works typically issues alerts to citizens. About 15% of the coastline is also lined with natural sandbanks. The most visible of rising sea level barriers is the 280 mile sea wall which works with existing mangroves that protect 60% of the coastline.15 The seawall is punctuated with sluice gates which operate via gravity and allow floodwaters from heavy rains and waves higher than the wall to drain. However, these gates are not able to open if the tide is not low enough which poses an immense threat at times as all the city can do is wait for the water level to decrease. A number of locations also depend on pumped drainage. Improvement of such infrastructure would require funds which the nation struggles to find funding for. Another consequence of sea level rise is the contamination of saltwater in fields and estuaries used for irrigation for agricultural production. Saltwater can also threaten freshwater supplies and freshwater fisheries.
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Fig. 2.16
Fig. 2.17
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Part of a Larger Pattern Sea level has been rising globally since the end of the last ice age. From 1993 to 2009, the annual rate rose to 0.13 inches, nearly twice the twentieth century average.16 This acceleration can be attributed to rising carbon emissions, due to human activity. As global temperatures increase, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt, thus causing oceans expand. Concepts such as the 100-year flood used to carry far more meaning in the past than they currently do. The 100 year flood is defined as a flood event that has a 1 in 100 chance of being equaled or exceeded in any given year. A common misconception is that a flood so devastating and catastrophic is only likely to occur once in a 100-year period. However, due to the variable of carbon emissions, which is tied to unpredictable human behavior, such a flood can happen frequently in that period. It is increasingly becoming more and more difficult to accurately predict future conditions. Aside rising sea levels, other influencing factors include sinking and rising land, circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean as well as the origin of melt water. Guyana, specifically experiences sinking of its land due to groundwater extraction, soil compaction and most importantly the drainage of its wetlands. Between 1951 and 1979, Guyana’s sea level rose six times faster than the global average (0.4 inch).
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Fig. 2.18 CHANGE IN SEA LEVEL | OBSERVED VIA SATELLITES | nasa.gov
Fig. 2.19 CHANGE IN SEA LEVEL | COASTAL TIDE GAUGE DATA | nasa.gov
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Future of the City The government is already aware of the risk of complete inundation and has implemented an action plan however such a plan, requires adequate funding which is currently nonexistent. Not only would worsening conditions impact the daily lives of Guyanese citizens but it would also have catastrophic consequences for a large percentage of the gross domestic product such a sugar and rice. The government roughly projects that the cost to rehabilitate existing infrastructure could exceed $1 billion (U.S.). This cost estimate includes building, and reinforcing levees and seawalls. To provide context, $1 billion U.S. is equivalent to 20% of Guyana’s GDP in 2010. Other measures the Ministry of Agriculture has taken is the encouragement of residents to relocate farther inland. In 2010, the ministry made new land available in order to allow coastal farmers to swap their land for those more inland. Understandably, such a drastic lifestyle change and disruption is not very attractive for the average resident. Since the conception of the capital, the economy and livelihood of the city has rested upon the coastal belt. To ask citizens to change all of this is quite a difficult pill to swallow. Not only is the man-made infrastructure at risk of destruction, but so is the ecosystem. Mangroves are native to the Guyanese coast. The species quite impressively naturally moved landward as sea level rises. However, because the coast is completely developed, the mangroves have nowhere to move to and consequently die from being pinned in place as sea level rises. The elimination of these trees would further expose the coast to saltwater inundation, storm surges, and reduce the nursery habitat for commercial fishing an immense economic driver. Just as mangroves have nowhere to move to, moving the population would result in massive disruption of the coastal and wetland ecological systems. The discovery of oil and generation of revenue could drastically change the financial climate of not only the city, but the country. This newfound income could fund the improvement of existing infrastructure and introduction of new infrastructure. Only time will tell. However, one thing is for sure - something must change otherwise the city will face complete inundation.
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Fig. 2.20
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Fig. 2.21
Chapter 02 1 Jack K. Menke and Bonham C. Richardson, “Guyana,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, October 21, 2019, https:// www.britannica.com/place/guyana. 2 W. Edwards and K. Gibson, “An Ethnohistory of Amerindians in Guyana,” Ethnohistory, vol. 26, no. 2, (1979): 161–175. https://doi:10.2307/481091. 3 Andrew Sanders, “British Colonial Policy and the Role of Amerindians in the Politics of the Nationalist Period in British Guiana, 1945-68,” Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (September, 1987): 77-98. 4 Ibid. 5 Juanita de Barros, Order and Place in a Colonial City. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, 9. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Guyana under the British, Dutch, French. Guyana News and Information. Accessed November 5, 2019. http://www.guyana.org/features/guyanastory 10 Odeen Ishmael, The Guyana Story: From Earliest Times to Independence. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2014. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Clifford Krauss, “The $20 Billion Question for Guyana,” NY Times, July 20, 2018. 14 Mark Pelling, “What Determines Vulnerability to Floods: A Case Study in Georgetown, Guyana,” Environment and Urbanization, Vol.9, No. 1 (1997). 15 Ibid. 16 David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, New York: Penguin Random House. (2019)
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03
MAPPING THE CITY
The Lay of the Land
Understanding Georgetown’s Place in the Country
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t is mandatory to understand the lay of the land before proposing an architectural intervention which addresses the effects of rising sea levels - both on a macroscopic scale and a microscopic one. Upon mapping the different conditions of the land, several layers of information were overlaid upon one another to observe patterns, anomalies, and points of interest which could be further investigated. The mapping exercise eventually lead to the generation of the three city scenarios.
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The land of Guyana is widely diverse and breaks down into a number of categories:
Mangrove: Characterized by a tree or shrub that grows in chiefly tropical coastal swamps that are flooded at high tide. Mangroves typically have numerous tangled roots above ground and form dense thickets.1 Swamp: Vegetation which is a forested wetland. Many swamps occur along large rivers where they are critically dependent upon natural water level fluctuations. Other swamps occur on the shores of large lakes. Some swamps have hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodic inundation or soil saturation.2 Rain Forest: About 77% of Guyana is forest however there are quite a few different types that exist within the country. The rain forest is a hot, moist biome where it rains all year long. It is known for its dense canopies of vegetation that form three different layers.3 Seasonal Forest: The moist deciduous, semi-evergreen seasonal, tropical mixed or monsoon forests, typically contain a range of tree species only some of which drop some or all of their leaves during the dry season. 4 Dry Forest: Occurs in climates that are warm year-round and may receive several hundred centimeters of rain per year, they have long dry seasons which last several months and vary with geographic location.5 Montane Forest: Any ecosystem found in the mountains. These ecosystems are strongly affected by climate, which gets colder as elevation increases. They are stratified according to elevation. Dense forests are common at moderate elevations.6 Rupununi Savannah: Located in the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo region. It is an ecoregion of the Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome.7
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Wetlands Mapping of Greater Georgetown Area
Fig. 3.03
Georgetown
cultivated area mangrove swamp swamp vegetation rain forest seasonal forest dry forest montane forest rupununi savannah
Fig. 3.02
intermediate savannah scrub and wet savannah
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STORM SURGE Storm Surge + Land Use Map
mixed farming uncultivated sugar cane rice cash crops coconut residential
Fig. 3.04
mixed farming uncultivated sugar cane
Geologic Cross-Section of Georgetown
200 m
rice cash crops
0m
coconut
200 m
residential Fig. 3.05
400 m water table groundwater flow clay sand + gravel precambrian basement 62
2030
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Fig. 3.06 Projection of Inundation in Future
upper class middle class poverty
Climate Central, a coastal risk screening tool, was used to project land that will be below tide-line in specific years. As an exercise, several neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic conditions were mapped as well to study how they were affected by such conditions.8 Mapping revealed that impoverished neighborhoods in the southeast region of Georgetown was at highest risk of inundation. Ultimately, the canal running west to east, La Penitence, through this region was chosen as the site to explore.
SEAWALL
CANAL
WATER PUMP
CANAL CROSS SECTIONS
SLUICE
Fig. 3.05
Chapter 03 1 Mangroves For Building Resilience To Climate Change: a Field Manual. R. Mandal. R. Bar - Apple Academic Press Inc. 2019. 2 Tropical Rain Forest Ecology, Diversity, and Conservation Jaboury Ghazoul-Douglas Sheil - Oxford Univ. Press 2014. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.
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L earning from othe rs Precedents
Can Georgetown borrow techniques from cities with similar circumstances?
+
R
ising sea levels are detrimentally affecting cities of all socioeconomic classes around the world. Depending on their existing infrastructure, financial funding available, and the needs of the population, they each respond in unique ways to water management issues. Numerous cities were studied in pursuit of an adequate understanding of the many ways the built environment can be designed to respond to flooding and drainage especially as climate conditions only worsen. However, ultimately the four cities which had the most immense impact on the final result of this thesis included Alaska, the Netherlands, Venice and Mumbai (city aerials in respective order to the left). Each city will be described in further detail in this chapter.
+
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Monica Kasayuli dries herring. Photograph by Katie Orlinksy National Geographic
Fig. 4.06
Kaliegh Charles collects goose eggs with her family along the Ninglick. Subsistence-based practices such as gathering eggs, hunting, and fishing are a way of life in Newtok. Photograph by Katie Orlinksy National Geographic Fig. 4.07
Michael Fairbanks skins a muskrat he hunted. Photograph by Marc Lester Anchorage Daily News
Fig. 4.08
“The shoreline in front of the village is moving inland and it’s worse when there’s a storm. Our ancestral burial ground is now underwater and so is the site where we used to have our co-operative store...We’ve built a sea wall using coconut logs and planted mangroves along the shoreline to mitigate sea level rise and damage from storm surges, but the shoreline has reached some of the houses and the only option for us is to move inland.” - Josateki Manatua
Fig. 4.09 Fig. 4.05
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CLIMIGRATION NEWTOK Relocation of Alaskan Villages By 2050, Alaska’s 100-year coastal floodplain is projected to expand by more than 15,000 square miles.1 Native Alaskans occupy the remote coastal villages on the western and northern belts where the topography is generally flat. The government has implemented several programs to assist impacted communities in their planned approach to shoreline protection, building relocation and eventual relocation of the village. As of October 2019, residents from Newtok are some of North America’s earliest climate change transplants.2 While investigating the village of Newtok, it is abundantly evident the residents have been facing increased flooding risks for the past few decades. The villagers of Newtok are descendants of the Yup’ik, seasonally nomadic hunters who eventually settled in Newtok in 1949. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had designated the site without residents’ input and the villagers have called it home ever since.
Fig. 4.10
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One study in the early 2000s showed vast sections of the town could become part of the river as early as 2027.
Fig. 4.11
Because of thawing permafrost and erosion, the land around their homes have begun to crumble and sink. The frozen ground below the surface is thawing and consequently causing roads, pipelines, and building foundations to buckle. Facilities like storage tanks are on the verge of collapsing, the community micro-landfill has been washed away and in general, the infrastructure established by villagers is immensely degraded. Storm surges are also rushing up rivers, and splashing into these coastal Alaskan communities.3 Newtok residents were not the only ones suffering in the past few decades - but they are indeed among the first to leave their homes to escape the effects of rising sea levels. Some houses that were in danger of collapsing have already been demolished. Families were given no choice but to move to the new village of Mertarvik, just about 10 miles southeast on Nelson Island.4
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Upon hearing of a community at risk of being completely inundated, one’s first response might be “just move.” Residents of Newtok were forced to move due to lack of investment in infrastructure. As a result of the move, they have been forced to leave the place they’ve known for their entire lives. It can be assumed that in moving the Alaskan village, residents are maintaining their proximity to the coast as well as the way of life (fishing, cultivating their own food, etc) rather than maintaining a fixed geographic point at the cost of losing the relationship to the edge. In considering Georgetown’s similar predicament, it is necessary to explore the option of physically moving the city. As established in Chapter 3, Mapping the City, Georgetown is completely surrounded by a blanket of marshland, plantations which heavily contribute to the economy and impenetrable forests thus making it incredibly difficult for the city to shift in any direction at all. That conclusion is exactly why this thesis probes the future of the city. Is it possible to occupy the same land however, occupy it in a different way than the Guyanese are used to? The exploration of Newtok provoked the revelation that while abandoning the land that residents are accustomed to is not ideal, drastic changes are inevitable in order to adequately respond to flooding and drainage issues in Georgetown. It is nearly impossible to maintain the way of life exactly as is and also be sustainable in an ever evolving climate.
Fig. 4.12
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Fig. 4.13
“God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands”
Fig. 4.14
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SEAS ONAL INFRAS TRUCTURE THE NETHERLANDS Engineered Landscape Approximately half of the Netherlands is below sea level thus making it one of the most flood prone countries in the world. However, it hasn’t faced any water related disasters since 1953 when a vast storm broke the dams, levees, and dikes and took away the lives of almost 2,000 people.5 For that very reason, the nation is regarded as experts in water management systems. As the Dutch were responsible for constructing Georgetown’s first defense against flooding - the 280-mile sea wall that lines the coastal belt - it is obligatory to delve into the infrastructure of the Netherlands in the pursuit of effective flood mitigation strategies. For centuries, the Netherlands has dealt with flooding and fluctuating water levels. They managed to mitigate such consequences with innovative water management techniques and technologies. The country is situated in a low-lying delta formed by the outflow of the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt Rivers.6 Original settlements were built on higher ground, however as the population flourished, the Dutch began to occupy low-lying lands as well. Population growth came about in the nineteenth century when the primary economic driver shifted from agriculture and trade to industrial technology. Before the country was habitable, it used to be covered in peat. With some man-made interventions like dikes, dams, and locks, drainage was addressed in a way previously unseen. Later on, pumping technology including the use of windmills were employed to drain swampy areas and create polders (dryland plots surrounded by dikes). The Dutch also constructed a comprehensive network of canals. In certain locations, the canals are flanked by uiterwaarden (Figure 4.13). Uiterwaards are embankments of soil “situated between a winter dike and the bed of a stream, river or canal.”7 The primary function of the floodplain is water management and is the space that the river needs to cope with temporary peak discharges.” Therefore, the floodplains are flexible; in the winter they may be submerged (and referred to as trousers), while in the summer, they are available to occupy as water levels are lower. As a whole, the land is primarily an engineered landscape.
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Watersquare Perhaps their most valuable strength is the Dutch’s application of a long-term and holistic perspective on flooding. Such foresight has protected the country on numerous occasions but also makes them the most effective in the world at water management. Such a mentality on the issue is mandatory in the city of Georgetown if the residents plan on staying put in the coming decades. Similarly to Guyana, the Netherlands suffered from flooding before climate change ever existed. Such mentality is even expressed in their construction of institutions on a more microscopic scale. Rotterdam faces the threat of heavy rainfall as many parts of the city are inundated every year. In 2014, the Watersquare was completed in Benthemplein, Rotterdam. It is a public square which contains three large rainwater collection ponds. However, when it is dry, the square functions as an amphitheater, basketball and volleyball court or skateboarding rink.8 The water square was proposed in an attempt to locate water storage systems on the surface thus explicitly making evident that taxpayer money is being used efficiently and wisely. Large stainless steel gutters are embedded in the pavement channel and thus direct water towards the three collection ponds. These gutters are intentionally oversized so as to serve skateboarders when not in function. One of the gutters projects above ground level to collect water from the roof of a nearby building. The Watersquare is a successful example of versatile urban infrastructure intended to bring light to water management issues but also serve the people of Rotterdam.
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Fig. 4.14
Fig. 4.15
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Fig. 4.16
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water as urban s pac e VENICE The Floating City There is arguably no city better known for its canals than Venice. Venice is an island city, major seaport and capital of Veneto, northern Italy. It is located in the northwestern end of the Adriatic Sea and measures up to 90 miles in perimeter. The lagoon is relatively shallow and lined by sandbanks (called lidi in Italian). The network of canals and narrow streets has prevented the use of automobiles for transportation. The land itself resulted from the collision of Adriatic tidal currents and water of Alpine rivers (Piave, Sile, Bacchiglione, and Brenta).9 The urban structure still in place today came about in the 7th century when migrants from the mainland joined fishing communities in the higher mudflats and sandbanks. Quite similarly to Georgetown, settlements were driven by the necessity to fish not only for sustenance but for commerce. The city did not grow outward from the center. Instead, it was composed of settlements that coalesced into one. Each of these settlements/islands had a church, a public square, one or more wells for fresh water and at least one canal at its edge. Venice is defined by its intricate network of canals which were preconceived for transportation via boats, shelter from the mainland, protection from potential enemies and a natural sewerage system with tides flushing out twice daily. The city consists of 188 islands knit together by canals and bridges. Venice’s largest canal, the Grand Canal (more than two miles long and ranges from 100 to 225 feet wide), runs through the heart of Venice and is flanked on either side by a network of over 200 original canals all linked to one another. 10 These smaller canals are only 10 to 15 feet in depth. The Canale della giudecca separates the main part of Venice from the island of Giudecca and is comparatively much deeper ranging from 36 to 50 feet deep. When originally constructed, the buildings were not built directly upon the islands, rather on wooden platforms supported by wooden stakes penetrating the ground. While wood and moisture are typically opponents, because these wooden stakes are submerged in oxygen-poor water, microorganisms do not flourish nor consequently decay the wood. Quite the contrary, the wood has hardened to a stone-like state due to the minerals and salt in the water.
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“A close examination of their water-oriented urbanism in relation to the cultural discourse of their aquatic setting suggests that Venice deliberately attempted to blur the line between architecture and nature.”
The canals of pre-modern Venice functioned as areas of urban space. These waterways were not merely utilitarian as a route for transportation. The Venetians ingeniously used the aquaticbased spatial network to generate a city fabric whose buildings, topography, and water work in tandem. While some landowners took the initiative to drain, dredge, and fill marshes with pools of water (and at their own expense), other canals were commissioned via the city. These bodies of water were occupied daily by merchants, fishermen, artisans, shopkeepers unskilled laborers and more. Canals are filled with barges carrying produce, boats filled with tourists’ baggage, fisherman traveling to and fro and energy unlike any other. 11 The city wouldn’t be as pedestrian friendly as it is without bridges to connect the entire city. Unfortunately, flooding has struck the city with force due to geologic sink of the Po River basic, rising sea levels, and over extraction of fresh water from mainland aquifers. Studies suggest that the Italian city is slowly tilting to the east as well as sinking ( at a rate of 0.04 to 0.08 inches per year).12 Venice’s subsidence is a result of pumping groundwater from beneath the city. The city has responded to the severity of inundation by raising platforms in major public spaces to allow pedestrians to walk around however this is proving to be far from sustainable. In addition, a multi-billion dollar effort to install flood-protection gates that can be raised to block incoming rides is nearing completion. As observed in other cities - infrastructure like this can only do so much and oftentimes fail to keep up with ever increasing sea levels and storm surges.13 The floodgates would need to be raised so often they would function like a near permanent wall. If a more permanent solution is not achieved, the city will cease to keep existing and will exclusively function as a museum for tourists.
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Fig. 4.17
While quite different in urban structure, several characteristics of the canals and bridges could be applied to a city like Georgetown as canals are already a major infrastructure which serve the city in more than one way. However, Venice is both an antecedent as well as a precedent. While canals are beneficial in their ability to serve as drainage, they can also overflow and lead to even more flooding. Georgetown’s canals must possess the capacity to successfully drain the city of excess water and perhaps when combined with the Dutch concept of uiterwaarden, will be able to flexibly respond to high tides and storm surges in a more effective way than the Venetians canal network.
Fig. 4.18
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Fig. 4.19
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ADOPTING A MENTALITY SOAK Anuradha Mathur + Dilip da Cunha Mumbai is perceived as an island city. However, landscape architect, Anuradha Mathur, and urban planner, Dilip da Cunha, challenge this label in their exhibit ‘SOAK’ - Mumbai in an estuary. The exhibition SOAK opened at the National Gallery of Modern art in Mumbai on June 23rd, 2009.14 The inhabitants of Mumbai are accustomed to having their land soaked by the monsoon; it was a way of life. However on July 26th, 2005, Mumbai suffered from one of the worst floods in its history.15 Hundreds of citizens died, countless houses and buildings were submerged under feet of water and lives completely altered from that point on. This rainfall was unlike any other. In fact, the average for the whole season fell in that single day (nearly 37 inches). Most cities of the world were initially built under the assumption that land and water are separable. Land is privileged over water. Therefore, hard edges exist in the landscape to enforce this divide. However, this can no longer dictate how land and water are treated nor perceived. Mathur and da Cunha challenge such a dogma and explore a new plan for the city of Mumbai. SOAK proposes design interventions that hold, accept and embrace water rather than channel it back out to the sea. SOAK is a new visualization of the city as a ‘fluid field of rain-soaked surfaces.’16 In the attempt to achieve the gradient of an estuary, the pair of designers proposed a radical shift in the way Mumbai residents view their land and the negotiation between public and private. Mathur and da Cunha investigate landscapes such as swamps, oarts, talaos, and bazaars which “occupy the fluid and open gradient of an estuary, a terrain that operates more as a filter between land and sea than a line between them.17 They demand a different way of seeing and a different mode of representation through section, horizon, and time.”
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Fig. 4.20
SOAK is a powerful piece of work as it challenges us to question what we think we know. On a map, land is separated from water by a line. In reality, this is not the case - Georgetown knows that very well. It is abundantly clear that a new urban framework for Georgetown requires a shift in perspective. The assumption that the line must instead be treated as a gradient is one the city of Georgetown absolutely must adopt otherwise it will continue to decline in its ability to protect itself from an ever changing ocean and climate conditions.
Fig. 4.21
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An estuary demands gradients not walls, fluid occupancies not defined land uses, negotiated moments not hard edges.
In short, it demands the accommodation of the sea not a war against it.
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Fig. 4.22
Chapter 04 1 Marc Lester. 2019. “A Western Alaska Village, Long Threatened by Erosion and Flooding, Begins to Relocate.” Anchorage Daily News. 2 Craig Welch. “Climate Change has Finally Caught up to this Alaska Village” October 27, 2019. https://www. nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/climatechange-finally-caught-up-to-this-alaska-village/ 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Fransje Hooimeijer and Wout van der Toorn Vrijthoff. More Urban Water Design and Management of Dutch Water Cities. Independence: CRC Press, 2014. 6 Ibid. 7 lgen, S., F. Sengers, and J. A. Wardekker. “City-toCity Learning for Urban Resilience: The Case of Water Squares in Rotterdam and Mexico City.” Water 11, no. 5 (2019): 983. 8 Water Square Benthemplein in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.” Landscape Architecture Frontiers 1, no. 4 (2013): 136. 9 Denis E. Cosgrove and Robert Cessi. “Venice,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, December 18, 2019, https:// www.britannica.com/place/venice. 10 Robert L. France. Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design. S.l.: CRC Press, 2019, 30. 11 Venice: City of Dreams. 2012. https://fod.infobase. com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=10559&xtid=190194. 12https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/howvenices-plan-to-protect-itself-from-flooding-becamea-disaster-in-itself/2019/11/19/7e1fe494-09a8-11ea8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html 13 Daniel Savoy, Venice from the Water: Architecture and Myth in an Early Modern City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.) 14 Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha. SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary (Mississippi: Yale University Press, 2001) 44. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.
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Can Georgetown learn how to cope with rising sea levels with a new form of infrastructure?
Fig. 5.01
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05
tra ns lation Process + Design
APPLICATION IN GEORGETOWN
I
nfrastructure is the skeleton that gives the city shape, structure and function. Infrastructure can be classified as hard or soft. Hard infrastructure functions to protect a city and its survival. It can include transportation systems, water and sewage management, energy grids, railways, pipelines, dams, canals, etc. This is what hard infrastructure means in this day and age. Soft infrastructure promotes the quality of life. The critical difference between hard and soft can be reduced to surviving versus thriving. Soft infrastructure contributes to the daily cultural and social development of a city. It might include institutions like the government, industries, law, etc. One is not superior to the other. They must both operate in tandem to contribute to a functioning city. Open space can also be categorized as infrastructure. Spaces like Tiananmen Square in Beijing and Times Square in New York contribute to the function and livelihood of the city. The open space that lines the periphery of the sea wall can be considered an open space that serves Georgetown in more ways than one. The British initially constructed the sea wall in 1855 to prevent flooding during high tides. It is a protective barrier. It no longer exclusively functions as a barrier. It is a meeting place, it is a jogging path, it is a venue for festivals. Cities have always desired to protect themselves by means of fortification - in Georgetown, this meant a stone wall. However, as cities evolve, so must their infrastructure. What does this new infrastructure look like?
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A NEW PERSPECTIVE If humans insist on inhabiting hard, fixed locations, we will continue to be at odds with the forces of nature - battle we are not fit to win. If we instead embrace the idea that we reside in a relationship to the edge, albeit a floating edge, then we can dream, build and live in a harmonious condition. As Arthur C. Clarke advised, “There is a time to battle nature and a time to obey her. True wisdom lies in making the right choice.� More often than not, human settlements end up close to some sort of body of water - whether it is a seaside or riverside. The edge, however, is not a single defined line, but, a broad zone. The built environment is perceived as static, permanent, and inflexible. The challenge here is to reconcile the impermanence nature of the landscape and the permanence of the built environment. To identify and design the functions that can exist, thrive in the margin. This rethinks architecture but preserves life on the edge. It also rethinks the bridge as more than a mere connection from and to land but as the connection from land to margin.
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E E
POTENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN LAND AND WATER
ABOVE ABOVE
ON ON
ON ON
UNDER UNDER
UND UND
Fig. 5.02
Fig. 5.03
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BRIDGETOWN
B
ridgetown operates on the assumption that the groundscape is intended to flood and at certain moments, even collect water. Such an assumption requires a new solution for the primary activities that take place on the ground: traveling and agriculture. The proposal calls for the shifting of the streetscape up a level, thus connecting the city via sky bridges as well as the replacement of backyard gardens with rooftop gardens. Georgetown is re-imagined as a city of bridges. While radical in terms of feasibility, this intervention eliminates water as a threat and preserves agriculture as it is critical to the Guyanese way of life. However, the necessary infrastructure required to support such a system would be incredibly expensive and require intense labor. The value in this proposal is the exploration of re-imagining what the streetscape looks like and the way humans interact with it.
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Fig. 5.04
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Fig. 5.05
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MANGROVE PARK
A
mangrove is a tree or shrub that thrives in tropical and coastal swamps that are flooded at high tide. Their unique roots allow them to remain above water despite shifting tide levels. Mangroves cover about 290 km of Guyana’s 430 km long coast and line many of its rivers. Mangroves have always been critical to the country’s sea defense. They serve as a storm buffer by dampening wave action, reducing wave energy, trapping sediments, stabilizing shoreline substrates, contributing to carbon sequestration and serving as a nursery for shrimp, fish, and crab among other organisms unique to the geographic region. However, in recent decades, the mangroves that line the coastal belt have begun to die. Globally, mangrove habitats are decreasing at a rate of approximately 1% per year (370,050 acres of mangroves wetlands). Approximately 50% (80 million acres) decrease in the last 50 years; of that 20-30% loss in the last 30 years (1980-2010). As sea levels rise, mangroves move landward. Because the coastal belt of Georgetown is lined by a seawall and buildings, these mangroves have nowhere to move and ultimately die. Mangrove Park proposes the elimination of a sea wall and a coastline that is pushed further inland. Mangroves will be reintroduced in replacement of the sea wall. By shifting the coastline, it is necessary to densify buildings in order to accommodate the existing population. A new Georgetown is envisioned as a densified city characterized by taller buildings. Such an exploration led to a typology previously unseen in the city - the tower. Typical Georgetown residents occupy two story houses. This intervention proposes the densification of housing (into apartment buildings) thus altering daily life - from things like no longer owning a backyard garden to the lack of a personal outdoor space for recreation. This intervention led to the revelation that their way of life may have to alter in some manner in order to accommodate new infrastructure.
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Fig. 5.06
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101
“There are no solutions to climate change, only combinations of enginee red
h a rd
a nd
soft
- J err y van Eyc k
Fig. 5.07
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protections.�
Fig. 5.08
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Fig. 5.09
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CANAL CITY
C
anal City is driven by two pressures: culture and flooding. A canal is an open waterway intended to carry water from one location to another. In Georgetown, the existing canals all terminate at the mouth of the Demerara River or the Atlantic Ocean via sluices (gates which allow the water out/in). Canal City proposes a more integrated network of canals as well as the addition of more canals to contribute to more effective drainage in the city thus addressing the issue of flooding. This proposal also suggests a shift in transportation from the automobile to the boat. In Georgetown, the majority of the population already owns a boat (regardless of socioeconomic conditions) therefore, this intervention supports this aspect of the Guyanese culture. The value in exploring this radical proposition is the revelation that adding canals will not resolve the issue of drainage for this city. Currently, the canals of Georgetown overflow and spill out onto the periphery during heavy rainfall. Therefore, adding more canals would not fully resolve this. The form of the canal must be called into question. This leads to the exploration of the uiterwaarden - peripheral zones of canals intended to flood during certain scenarios thus meaning the widening of the canal. This was critical in exploring during the next phase of design.
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Fig. 5.10
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107
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Fig. 5.13
CON C LUS ion
A New City
E
dgeless visualizes landscapes as a new kind of infrastructure while informing the city’s future urban block structure. In transplanting the Dutch concept of uiterwaarden to Georgetown, canals are widened and lined with spaces intended to absorb tidal water, and hold storm water. Spaces like wetlands to support biodiversity, rice paddies to continue to drive the economy and fish farms to supplement the dying population are proposed as peripheral zones to the canals. The improved and integrated network provides ground for potential failure as the future is unknown therefore the land must be prepared to respond to anything. The Guyanese uiterwaarden serves as a new drainage system that augments existing engineered solutions and streamlines public to private thresholds. Because canals are widened, housing must be densified to accommodate the existing population but also anticipate a growing one. They are connected by a series of bridges which are always accompanied by a hydroponic tower which serves as a beacon for the neighborhood. But more importantly than serving as a signifier of each neighborhood, the hydroponic serves as community gardens and a simultaneous wastewater treatment plant. This thesis proposes one scenario in which this design might function as a case study to be applied to other neighborhoods in Georgetown and potentially other cities facing similar water management issues.
Can the landscape hold the water instead of reject it?
Fig. 5.14
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Georgetown should be visualized as a network of inhabitable infrastructure. 113
Edgeless unfolds in three scales...
114
uiterwaarden a terrain that operates as a filter between land and water rather than a division
densified housing utilizing the peripheries of canals for productive, soakable landscapes = displacing residences
the tower water shall be cleaned before flushed into the canal
115
Fig. 5.15
Case Study Site: La Penitence Canal
116
The neighborhood is sprinkled with a mix of informal settlements to lower to middle income residences. Many of these residents do not have access to running water nor plumbing. Consequently, the canal is littered with waste. The tower collects rainwater, serves as a vertical bathhouse and treats wastewater with a plant filtering system before flushing it into the canal.
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Fig. 5.16
Fig. 5.17
A successful version of Georgetown is one where its residents are able to . . .
worship
create streetart
party
bathe
air dry laundry
gather 120
shop local
walk to family
wash clothes
celebrate holidays
cook outside
hang clothes
practice yoga
dry fish
grow food
take care of goats
access clean water
play
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Fig. 5.18
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123
Fig. 5.19
The final component in this proposal is the tower. In a re-imagined waterfront, the proposal would be misguided to not address the water being flushed into the canal. Only 13 percent of the Guyanese population, mostly within the main Georgetown area, have ​access to modern sewage​, flushable toilets, septic tanks, latrines or compost-able toilets. As a result, untreated waste contaminates already flooding waters. Fecal matter is found in drains and there is a complete disrespect for the canal system. Untreated waste is released into the Demerara River and the canals compromising sanitation all over Guyana. If the canal is to be a revitalized and productive space, the water must be cleaner than it is now.
The vertical bathhouse becomes an opportunity for social gathering while also bringing attention to water management.
Therefore, the tower functions as a vertical bathhouse as well as a micro wastewater treatment plant using vegetation to treat water. Those without access now have a place with clean water to bathe and clean their clothes and use the restroom. The water is then treated before being released into the canals and rivers. and toilets. These spaces inevitably become social spaces. The city is discussing a massive and expensive wastewater treatment plant - what if this infrastructure could be more localized?
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laundry
men’s bath
women’s bath
water treatment
water treatment
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Fig. 5.20
The tower is primarily made of bamboo and concrete - local materials, abundant, and relatively cheap. The horizontal bamboo is staggered as a screen. A gradient of privacy. Men’s and women’s baths have a denser screen for privacy while the water treatment is sparser, making the process more visible to those that pass by. Woven screens serve as interior partitions and can be made by local people. Locality of the material and simplicity of the facade makes it easy to construct as this tower is intended to be replicated. FLOOR CONSTRUCTION
BAMBOO FACADE
WOVEN PARTITION
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127
Fig. 5.21
The tower anchors the neighborhood, appearing all over the city. It is a beacon, symbolizing a new, accessible water system the city desperately needs.
Fig. 5.22
The waterfront evolves into a bustl culture-specifi
rice paddies Wastewater is treated in the tower then flushed into the canal.
ling, chaotic, complex, productive, ic, civic space.
wetlands
Fig. 5.23
On a map land + water are To respond to climate change, this lin
Productive landscapes blur the e
e drawn separated by a line. ne is better represented as a gradient.
edge where the water meets land.
Fig. 5.24
The new image of the city
It is reminiscent of the quirks and nuan But it is a more intelligent landsca
is different but the same.
nces that define the Guyanese people. ape. It is a responsive landscape.
Fig. 5.25
Edgeless is a typological approach to
The proposal could be applied to th facing simila
136
o water management in Georgetown.
he entire city as well as other cities ar obstacles.
Fig. 5.26
IMAGE INDEX [ALL IMAGES CREATED BY AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED]
0.01 Sea Wall Collage 1.01 Guyanese Fishermen Making their Way Home | Gregory, Christopher. July 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/ business/energy-environment/the-20-billion-question-for-guyana. html. 1.02 Google Earth Image of Greater Georgetown Region | Google Maps, maps.google.com 1.03 Google Earth Image of Georgetown | Google Maps, maps.google. com 1.04 The Great Flood of 2005 | Bruce, Iian, February 5, 2005, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4255691.stm 1.05 Canals of Georgetown | http://www.onemanwolfpack.de/dronevideos/4k-drone-footage-the-beauty-of-the-guianas-in-11-minutes2019-cinematic-aerial-french-guyana-surina/ 1.06 House by a Canal| Ibid 1.07 City Aerial | Ibid 1.08 Starbroek Market | Ibid 1.09 St. George’s Cathedral | Ibid 1.10 Residences in Southern Wards | Ibid 1.11 The Parliament | Ibid 1.12 The Lighthouse | Ibid 1.13 Downtown Aerial | Ibid
138
1.14
Guyana Cricket Field | Ibid
1.15
Time’s Effect on the Coastline
2.01
The Garden City Postcard
2.02
The Dutch Colonize Guyana | https://www.agefotostock. com/age/en/Stock-Images/Rights-Managed/MEV-10207507
2.03
British Guiana | https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/guyana. html
2.04 2.05
Dutch Guiana | https://inter-antiquariaat.nl/en/antiques/sold/ dutch-guiana-plantations/
2.06
Downtown Aerial | http://www.onemanwolfpack.de/dronevideos/4k-drone-footage-the-beauty-of-the-guianas-in-11minutes-2019-cinematic-aerial-french-guyana-surina/
2.07
Guyana’s Discovery of Oil | Gregory, Christopher. July 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/business/ energy-environment/the-20-billion-question-for-guyana.html.
2.08
Guyanese Rice Plantation Man | Ibid.
2.09
The Sea Wall | https://www.thenatureofcities. com/2018/05/27/water-everywhere-georgetown-guyanadisrespect-will-kill-us/
2.10
The Sluice System |Ibid.
2.11
The Canal Network | Ibid.
2.12
The East Demerara Water Conservancy | Ibid.
2.13
The East Demerara Water Conservancy | Ibid.
2.14
Diagram of How the East Demerara Water Conservancy Operates
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IMAGE INDEX (continued) [ALL IMAGES CREATED BY AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED]
2.15 Location of how the East Demerara Water Conservancy Operates 2.16 Great Flood of 2005 2.17 Water Splashing Beyond Sea Wall 2.18 Coastal Sea Level | nasa.gov 2.19 Coastal Sea Level | nasa.gov 2.20 Future of Oil in Guyana | Gregory, Christopher. July 20, 2018, https:// www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/business/energy-environment/the-20billion-question-for-guyana.html. 2.21 Coastline Collage 3.01 Google Earth Aerial of Georgetown | Google Maps, maps.google.com 3.02 Land Type Country Map 3.02 Wetlands Map 3.03 Crop Zone and Storm Surge Map 3.04 Geologic Cross-Section of Georgetown 3.05 Land at Risk Projection Mapping by Decade 3.06 Georgetown City Map with Canal Cross Sections 4.01 Google Earth Aerial of Newtok | Google Maps, maps.google.com 4.02 Google Earth Aerial of Rotterdam | Google Maps, maps.google.com 4.03 Google Earth Aerial of Venice | Google Maps, maps.google.com
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4.04
Google Earth Aerial of Mumbai | Google Maps, maps.google. com
4.05
Edge of Newtok | Welch, Craig. “Climate Change has Finally Caught up to this Alaska Village” October 27, 2019. https://www. nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/climate-change-finallycaught-up-to-this-alaska-village/
4.06
Woman Drying Herring| Ibid.
4.07
Young Girl Gathering Goose Eggs | Ibid.
4.08
Man Skinning Muskrat | Lester, Marc. 2019. “A Western Alaska Village, Long Threatened by Erosion and Flooding, Begins to Relocate.” Anchorage Daily News.
4.09
Villager Expressing Lament | Ibid. 4.10
Young Boys of Newtok Playing | Ibid.
4.11
Newtok Aerial | Ibid.
4.12
Mervatik Aerial | Ibid.
4.13
Uiterwaarden Diagram
4.14
Uiterwaarden in the Netherlands | https:// tulipfestivalamsterdam.com/experience-the-dutch-icons-cheesemillsfish-cows/
4.15
Watersquare During Normal Operation and During Storm | nextcity.org
4.16
Google Earth Aerial of Venice | Google Maps, maps.google.com
4.17
Picturesque Canal in Venice | www.veniceevents.com
4.18
A City Workers Assists a Woman Crossing | Ibid.
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IMAGE INDEX (continued) [ALL IMAGES CREATED BY AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED]
4.19 Mapping Land Use Over Time | Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha. SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary (Mississippi: Yale University Press, 2001) 4.20 The Great Flood | Ibid. 4.21 Mapping Time | Ibid. 4.22 Elevation Study | Ibid. 5.01 Collage of City Dilemma and Perception of it 5.02 Above, On, In Water Diagram 5.03 Bridgetown Zoomed In 5.04 Bridgetown 5.05 Mangrove Park Zoomed In 5.06 Mangrove Park 5.07 Housing Integrated into Mangrove Park 5.08 Think Like a Mangrove 5.09 Canal City Zoomed In 5.10 Canal City 5.11 Proposed Canal Perspective 5.12 Existing Canal Cross-Sections 5.13 The Proposed Canal Front
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5.14 Georgetown City Map Figure Ground 5.15 Diagrams of Three Phases 5.16 Figure Ground of La Penitence Canal 5.17 Axonometric of Canal Front Neighborhood 5.18 Day in the Life Vignettes 5.19 Axonometric of Water Tower 5.20 Section of Water Tower 5.21 Elevation of Water Tower 5.22 Theme and Variation of Tower Rendering 5.23 Section Perspective of Canal during Dry Season 5.24 Section Perspective of Canal during Wet Season 5.25 The Image of the City 5.26 Aerial of the City
143
SELECTED READINGS CIA. Accessed November 1, 2019. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/print_gy.html Cosgrove, Denis E. and Robert Cessi. “Venice,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, December 18, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/place/venice. De Barros, Juanita. Order and Place in a Colonial City. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. Edwards, W. and K. Gibson, “An Ethnohistory of Amerindians in Guyana,” Ethnohistory, vol. 26, no. 2, 1979. https://doi:10.2307/481091. France, Robert L. Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design. S.l.: CRC Press, 2019. Guyana under the British, Dutch, French. Guyana News and Information. Accessed November 5, 2019. http://www.guyana.org/features/guyanastory. Hamilton, Lawrence C., Kei Saito, Philip A. Loring, Richard B. Lammers, and Henry P. Huntington. 2016. “Climigration? Population and Climate Change in Arctic Alaska.” Population and Environment 38. Hooimeijer, Fransje and Wout van der Toorn Vrijthoff. More Urban Water Design and Management of Dutch Water Cities. Independence: CRC Press, 2014. lgen, S., F. Sengers, and J. A. Wardekker. “City-to-City Learning for Urban Resilience: The Case of Water Squares in Rotterdam and Mexico City.” Water 11, no. 5, 2019. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, ‘World Disaster Reduction Campaign 2010-2011’ United Nations 2010 (https://unisdr.org/files/14030_ FAQscampaignpresskit.pdf), retrieved 01 January 2020. Ishmael, Odeen. The Guyana Story: From Earliest Times to Independence. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2014. Krauss, Clifford. “The $20 Billion Question for Guyana,” NY Times, July 20, 2018.
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Lester, Marc. 2019. “A Western Alaska Village, Long Threatened by Erosion and Flooding, Begins to Relocate.” Anchorage Daily News. Lim, Cj. Inhabitable Infrastructures - Science Fiction or Urban Future? Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2017. Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. The MIT Press, 1960. Mathur, Anuradha and Dilip da Cunha. SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary. Mississippi: Yale University Press, 2001. McHarg, Ian L. Design with Nature. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Menke, Jack K. and Bonham C. Richardson, “Guyana,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, October 21, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/place/guyana. Pelling, Mark. “What Determines Vulnerability to Floods: A Case Study in Georgetown, Guyana,” Environment and Urbanization, Vol.9, No. 1, 1997. Sanders, Andrew. “British Colonial Policy and the Role of Amerindians in the Politics of the Nationalist Period in British Guiana, 1945-68,” Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3. September, 1987. Savoy, Daniel. Venice from the Water: Architecture and Myth in an Early Modern City. Yale University Press, 2012. UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), ‘The Impacts of ClimateChange Upon Urban Areas’ Earthscan, London, 2011. Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth, New York: Penguin Random House. 2019. Water Square Benthemplein in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.” Landscape Architecture Frontiers 1, no. 4, 2013. Welch, Craig. “Climate Change has Finally Caught up to this Alaska Village” October 27, 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/ climate-change-finally-caught-up-to-this-alaska-village/
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