The ability to reveal the hidden layers of hydrology can take many forms. Public art is a great mechanism for telling stories in ways that engage and reveal that which is often missing from our day to day experiences. These artworks also highlight key contributions of communities that are often marginalized in the official histories we are taught. Artists Shu-Ju Wang and Lynn Yarne developed a vibrant example of this at the new Lincoln High School in Portland with a large exterior mural called Restoration Roadmaps which locates the hidden hydrology story within the context of the urban high school. The summary of the project, from the artistโs website for Restoration Roadmaps provides some of processes and the outcomes:
โThe process enabled us to come to a final design that is a combination of several forms of maps to describe the neighborhoodโfrom historical to a hoped for future, from topographical to ecological, from google map to the old fashioned foldout map. Student and community responses are recorded as part of the topographical contours and inset panels.โ
The images are rich with detail, focusing on the high school site and the contemporary grid, juxtaposed with the Tanner Creek historical route with other water bodies that have been erased. The creek gulches were the locations of highly productive garden areas farmed by Chinese immigrants and also provided historical areas of Native American occupation. The mural includes smaller square panels with community work done by other artists and students, and the perimeter of the mural provides detailed assemblages of 40 species of flora and fauna Indigenous to the area.
It was fun to see the process evolve and the final product โin the wildโ below. Let me know if youโre local and have seen the mural, or if there are other murals in your community celebrating hidden hydrology. Would love to hear from you.
Beyond helping with some mapping for the mural, my other contribution was this short video, Tanner Creek Hidden Hydrology, walking through the history of the area in the context of the historical water. Iโve included the video below:
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 02/28/25 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.
In Northwest Portland, Oregon, red-legged frogs living in Forest Park face a dangerous commute in the fall and winter, traversing from their upland homes down to the spawning grounds adjacent to the Willamette River. The species typically is found in conifer hardwood forests that have an aquatic-terrestrial connection to ponds and wetlands as part of their life cycles.
Northern Red-legged Frog
The degree of landscape changes inherent over time is seen in a series of maps spanning the previous century and a half of urbanization, centered near present-day Harborton, the location of a critical habitat connection for the frogs. From the original surveys in the 1850s, the area was lightly developed, and the areas noted as โTimber, Fir, Cedar, Maple, Hemlock, Yew, etc.โ showing the zones that would become modern Forest Park and the uninterrupted upland to lowland connections along the Willamette River.
By the 1900s and the mapping from the USGS Topographic Survey, some development was happening along the water in the early town of Linnton, and the rail lines were built that started to sever these historical ecological connections.
1897 USGS Topographic Survey (via TopoView)
The current aerial image shows the clear line marking upland to lowland as separated by roadways and more impervious industrial development located along the Willamette River, reducing the amount of shoreline habitat.
2024 Aerial Image (via Google Earth)
The historical upland to lowland conditions has been radically disturbed along the entire margin of Forest Park. We could infer from the series of maps that historically, the frogs had significantly more habitat options along a much larger zone (and even more if you look at maps south of here showing additional lakes and wetlands), and that over time, a series of human-made linear barriers (railroad, roads) and urbanization cut off connections while reducing overall shoreline habitat. This ultimately resulted in a severe decline in several species populations, including the red-legged frogs.
As you see from a zoomed-in area, the major impediment for the frogs is a gauntlet, including a four-lane Highway 30, another smaller side road, and railroad tracks that prevent frogs from safely accessing the breeding area around the Willamette. Described by many as a real-life game of Frogger, the result is documented mass killings of frogs that attempt migration to these zones in rainy seasons.
As a response to the negative impacts of the species, an intrepid group of volunteers has implemented what they call the Frog Taxi. Starting in 2013, as documented on the site Linnton Frogs, the group has mobilized annually to collect frogs from Forest Park, transporting them across Highway 30 and other roads and railroad tracks to get to the breeding around along the Willamette, and then relocating them back across the roadway to the upland. You can see some stats of the groupโs work from 2013-2021. The work has continued, and Oregon Field Guide recently did a story on this yearโs Frog Taxi, which provides a great overview of the process the volunteers undertake to save this remnant population of red-legged frogs.
Taxi to Where?
Making it across the barrier alone or via taxi only solves one part of the equation. To fully connect the life cycle, viable habitat conditions need to be provided for suitable breeding conditions on the waterside. The landscape of the entire edge of the area used to include the multiple connected ecosystems lakes along a long riverfront edge, including Guildโs, Kitteridge’s, and Doaneโs, which is notable as their surrounding wetland margins have been impacted.
Once the frogs can reach the site, the original habitat must be restored to provide suitable conditions. Currently owned by PGE, the taxi โdrop-off’โ site is the locus of additional restoration efforts, as noted from the PGE site related to the Harborton Habitat Project:
โThe site is one of the largest known breeding grounds for northern red-legged frogs, an amphibian species classified as โsensitiveโ by the state of Oregon and a โspecies of concernโ under Federal listing status. Additionally, the property is situated where the Willamette River meets Multnomah Channel โ a perfect spot for juvenile salmon to rest and find food on their way to the Pacific Ocean.โ
The overall goal is to move from taxi service to more uninterrupted connections from the upland forest to the pools to eliminate the game of Frogger, as well as eliminate the need for volunteers to fill the role of taxi drivers. The next iteration involves increasing overall habitat mobility through an amphibian tunnel that will funnel the frogs along the edges and allow them to move under the roadways and rail lines, connecting Forest Park directly to Harborton. As noted, the Harborton Frog Crossing Project proposed this new connection:
โIn an effort to save the dwindling frog population, local wildlife officials and the Oregon Wildlife Foundation have proposed to build a highway underpass to grant the amphibians safe passage. The project calls for a concrete culvert beneath Northwest St. Helens Road and Marina Way to help the frogs reach their preferred breeding grounds.โ
Other studies are helping pinpoint more specifics related to the locations and magnitude of the problem. There is funding to assess the mortality of the frog populations is underway by Northwest Ecological Research Institute (NERI), and funded by the Oregon Conservation & Recreation Fund Projects and the Oregon Zoo. The specific goals hope to inform the amphibian tunnel, as they state:
โA wildlife undercrossing and/or creating improved wetland spaces that do not require road crossings are the primary proposed solutions. These are expensive, infrastructure-based solutions, and more data is required to find the most appropriate path forward. Specifically, increased data on the rate and location of frogs being killed at road crossings will inform timing and movement patterns to find the best solution.โ
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Wildlife Ways
The Oregon Wildlife Corridor Action Plan (ODFW, January 2024) notes that there are naturally occurring barriers to wildlife movement, but the most critical are human-caused barriers that block movement. Within the context, they also discuss how barriers are relative to species, as quoted:
โThe most readily apparent human-caused barriers to animal movement are the physical structures that impede or outright prevent connectivity, such as buildings, fences, roadways, solar developments, and dams. The response of wildlife to structures varies by structure type and by species. For example, a fox may be able to make its way around a large industrial complex, whereas for a frog the complex might represent an impassable barrier. While not all physical structures will completely block animal movement, these features are often associated with increased risk of mortality for wildlife due to collisions, entanglement, entrapment, and persecution. Two of the most prevalent physical impediments to wildlife connectivity are roadways and fencing.โ
Wildlife crossings, in general, are gaining momentum with various overpass and underpass options that direct and funnel species from habitat areas and provide safe passage through dangerous areas. The focus is often on larger species, specifically deer and elk, here in Oregon, moving between fragmented parcels of land. There is also the potential to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions, with specific action plans to provide more solutions. These are dynamic opportunities to connect large habitat patches but come at a steep price.
The types of crossings also need to be adapted to the species’ needs. My favorite is the Crab Bridge on Christmas Island in Australia, which provides an almost vertical climb and spans over a roadway to facilitate the migration of red crabs.
Another analog is the work being done for fish passage, including strategies for repairing culverts to provide better access for fish, installing tidal gates to better allow movement up and downstream in fluctuating water cycles and implementing fish screens to limit access to certain waterways while providing access to certain areas necessary for the species to thrive. These are less visible than the larger wildlife connections; however, they also come at a significantly smaller cost and can be localized to specific species migration corridors.
The amphibian connections are a microcosm of these types of projects. More modest in scale, but growing in popularity, there are numerous examples around the globe of different types of passages that work for different amphibian species. The hope is that these will continue to do some of the necessary repair work for the severed connections between critical hydrological habitats, hopefully helping the Harborton Red-Legged Frog populations survive and thrive and give the taxi drivers a break.
Amphibian Crossing example from Doรฑana National Park, Spain (via Research Gate)
If you are aware of other examples of strategies being used to allow amphibians or other species to facilitate movement in fragmented landscapes, particularly those that are disconnected from historical waterways via development, I would love to hear about them.
The recent essay, โDaylighting a Brook in the Bronxโ (Pioneer Works, 10.23.24), by Emily Raboteau, focuses on a high-profile stream daylighting project from a residentโs perspective. The project to daylight Tibbetts Brook has been ongoing for many years. For some quick background, Tibbetts Brook originates north of New York City in Yonkers, where it flows from Tibbetts Brook Park, heading south into the Bronx and reemerging above ground in Van Cortlandt Park. It then flows underground the remainder of the way south through the city, as demonstrated on the graphic below, showing the original course of the now-buried waterway and its eventual connection into the last leg of the Harlem River before draining into the Hudson.
Illustration of Tibbetts Brookโs original course in the Bronx – via Pioneer Works
Raboteau, a resident of the Bronx, outlines the project from a personal and experiential perspective, joining some of the local advocates from the Tibbetts Advisory Group and the Parks Department and others working on the daylighting project and highlighting some of the site-based artworks focused around the brook. The positives of the project are notable, as she mentions early on in the essay:
โDaylighting will abate combined sewage overflow, extend greenspace, absorb heat, and relieve chronic flooding in our areaโs janky, archaic drainage system, in an act of climate mitigation and as a community effort to solve a mess caused by old crimes.โ
Iโm not planning on spending too much time recounting her specific words, which I strongly encourage you to take the time to read. I wanted to extract my reflections on a couple of critical themes she highlighted in her essay.
Perfection and Imperfection in Daylighting Projects
The challenges of these projects are myriad, and while striving for a solution that solves all the problems, trade-offs must often be made. She mentions a couple of issues, including the high cost, resistance from the MTA, and the need to underground the creek under rail lines in some industrialized portions. Additionally, gentrification could arise by โcleaning upโ marginal spaces during the daylighting project. On one hand, revitalization could improve the area and attract new residents and economic activity. Conversely, the improvements could incentivize new developments and rising costs, displacing long-time residents. Another issue she brings up is the potential lack of good access from some of the adjacent neighborhoods, creating questions of ultimately who will benefit and the overall environmental justice issues at heart in any project like this. As she notes:
โI had so many ethical questions without easy answers. It felt uncouth to ask them of a dream thirty years in the makingโฆ. Could it ever be pleasant here? Difficult to picture. Even with the brook resurrected, there would still be the sound of the road.
I wondered: how else might the park change the neighborhood? Will it invite gentrification? Will it grow too expensive to live here? Despite the ecological and economic benefits, will anyone suffer? Can daylighting outpace inundation, or will it be rendered moot by water tables that rise with the sea? If flooding catastrophes continue, what then? Would government funds be better spent moving the most disadvantaged among us out of the watershed to higher ground? Has anyone asked for the brookโs consent? Whose help is sanctioned when it comes to healing the land, and whose is rebuked?
The intersecting concerns and challenges are common in similar projects, no less complicated by threading daylighting through a dense urban center. Patience, openness, and creativity are vital, but the lack of these often results in projects never seeing the light of day. Compromises cannot come at the cost of marginalized communities. Yet, the short-sightedness of attempting to achieve โperfectโ restoration in the form of all-or-nothing solutions is equally as damaging to attain nothing. The ability to see multiple solutions that can celebrate, reveal, and restore function requires looking beyond the ecological and including pointing a lens at the cultural context of these projects, balancing imperfection with appropriateness.
Cultural Restoration
The potential of restoration lies beyond the technical aspects and helps us fill the gaps left in implementing imperfect solutions. Raboteau mentions some of the work of artists around the brook, much of it done under the banner of the โRescuing Tibbets Brookโ project as part of the Mary Miss-led project, City as Living Laboratory. Works mentioned include Visions of Tibbetts Brook, Tibbetts Estuary Tapestry, and Estuary Tattoos, all focusing on artistic and community works around the creek restoration.
Other cultural works are mentioned in the essay. Dennis RedMoon Darkeem‘s upcoming work and the planned daylighting project use harvested mugwort, an invasive species growing near the creek in Van Cortlandt Park, and weaving it into large textiles to act as sound barriers along the course of the stream corridor. She goes into more detail about two other artists. Noel Hefele and his Daylighting Tibbetts en Plein Air paintings (see below), and The Buried Brook, an augmented reality installation by Kamala Sankaram that uses a phone app to trace โthe sonic geography of the buried Tibbetts Brook.โ
Numerous documents and reports on the proposed $133 million project to daylight the brook can be discovered online, touching on many technical challenges. The real story is about grounding the technical with the human dimensions while highlighting the more prominent themes of hidden hydrology. Overall, the result of these cultural explorations to complement the hydrological and ecological, to Raboteau, can be revelatory:
โI appreciate how initiatives like these offer an expansive response to catastrophe, a way to gather, and even a sense of hope. Itโs not just the architecture of the daylighting project that interests me, the restitching at the scale of infrastructure, or the civic muscle behind the job, but the metaphysics of the exhumation. Daylighting feels like a cause for ceremony, a chance to pay respect to the body of the ghost river that flows unseen under our feet. Better yet, to imagine the perspective of the brook.โ
Both ideas above are inherent in the conceptual potential of what can be accomplished when we think beyond just daylighting as a functional pursuit. First, we must move beyond unrealistic ideas of โperfectโ and strive to achieve real projects that inevitably fall short of all that can be accomplished but succeed in not collapsing under the weight of being overly idealistic. Second, to achieve the first, we must continue to explore and expand our ways of engaging with lost rivers and buried creeks beyond. These include the incorporation of a continuum of solutions from the artistic to the ecological.
The recollection of the creek can be expressed metaphorically through art and soundscapes, which provide additional layers of meaning and context to the project’s more functional hydrological and ecological goals. This shows how daylighting projects, while aiming for restoration of function, are not really about attempts at pure ecological restoration but a mix of green infrastructure and ecological design aimed at multiple goals like access to nature for humans and other species, reconnecting communities, and achieving climate-positive design, among many other potentialities.
The potential of these solutions highlighted by Raboteau:
โDaylighting feels like a cause for ceremony, a chance to pay respect to the body of the ghost river that flows unseen under our feet.โ
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CONTEXTUAL CODA
Tibbetts Brook has been a topic of interest in my thinking on Hidden Hydrology for some time. I first discussed the Brook in an article on Steve Duncan, a โdrainerโ type of urban explorer focusing on underground and buried creeks and rivers. He has explored and photographed urban creeks around the globe, but focused on many New York City creeks, including Tibbetts Brook, as I wrote about in a post, โNYC: Watercourses to Undercityโ (Hidden Hydrology, 12.28.17).
Tibbetts Brook was the subject of the article โWhy New York Is Unearthing a Brook It Buried a Century Agoโ (NY Times, 12.6.21), which discusses the project goals and objectives in detail. โThe city plans to unearth the brook โ an engineering feat known as โdaylightingโ โ at a cost of more than $130 million, because burying it in the sewer system has worsened the cityโs flooding problems as a warming planet experiences more frequent and intense storms.โ
The re-interest in the Tibbets project and connections to climate-related flooding came about as a reckoning of post-hurricane Ida solutions, which included more โspongyโ green infrastructure, hardening critical infrastructure, and methods to โunclog drains and widen pipes.โ Iโve written about Eric Sandersonโs work of historical ecology and mapping hidden waterways in his Mannahatta and the broader Welikia Projects. He writes a powerful post-Ida opinion piece, โLet Water Go Where It Wants to Goโ (NY Times, 9.28.21), where he connects the impacts of Hurricanes Sandy and Ida to areas where waterways were buried, shorelines filled, and wetlands paved over.
โWater demands a place to go. That means making room for streams and wetlands, beaches and salt marshes. It means solving human-caused problems with nature-based solutions. These include removing urban impediments to let streams flow once again, a process known as daylighting; restoring wetlands and planting trees. It also means using the collective power of our community โ expressed through tax dollars โ to help people move to safer places.โ
Overlay of flooding locations (28th Street subway station) in New York City and the location of former wetlands (The National Archives via NY Times)
In my reflection on this article by Sanderson, these connections between hidden hydrology and climate are of keen interest, so this led me to investigate in more detail one of the significant benefits espoused by those advocating daylighting Tibbetts Brook โ which was alluded to by Raboteau โ the ability to make cities more resilient to climate change by removing base flow water from buried pipes, or captured streams, through daylighting, and freeing up that water to handle extreme rainfall events and reduce flooding. As noted in the NY Times article:
โThough out of sight, the brook pumps about 2.2 billion gallons of freshwater a year into the same underground pipes that carry household sewage and rainwater runoff to wastewater treatment plants. It takes up precious capacity in the outdated sewer system and contributes to combined sewer overflows that are discharged into nearby waterways.โ
To learn more about this concept, I wrote on โCaptured Streamsโ (Hidden Hydrology, 12.11.21), taking a deeper dive into the broader idea and its applications globally, drawing on a paper by Adam Broadhead and others, which makes the case that the encasement of freshwater streams in urban sewers is a widespread issue, significantly increases wastewater treatment costs by needlessly treating clean water and the various economic, social, and environmental benefits of diversion. The team included case studies from Zurich, highlighting efforts by the Swiss city to pioneer the idea of urban daylighting to remove base flow.
A diagram of the process, similar to the process envisioned at Tibbetts Brook, from the paper is below.
Diagram of buried stream separation from sewers in Zurich (via Broadhead et al.)
The Tibbetts Brook project aims to be a model case study in this form of separation. While the result will fulfill the goals to reduce flooding, create more resilience, and provide additional positive environmental benefits, the more significant questions Raboteau asks in her essay are vital to allow us to envision the bigger picture and redefine what counts as success: Who is included at the table in planning and design and how are those voices given appropriate weight? Who ultimately benefits? Who has access when the project is complete?
Give the essay a read, and let me know your comments.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/30/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
The article โReaching the Light of Dayโ (Orion, May 23, 2024) is compelling if youโre interested in hidden hydrology. Author Corinne Segal recounts some of the larger themes and projects around โghost streams,โ including work in New York, Baltimore, Auckland, Istanbul, and a handful of other locations. Beyond some of the projects they note, the article poses a larger question regarding our ancient โkinshipโ with water. This struck me as essential to the conversations around hidden hydrology, so took this as an opportunity to explore further. Various nuances and definitions of kinship span from biological to sociological. For a reference point, I grabbed this quick definition:
kinยทship /หkinหSHip/, noun. blood relationship; a sharing of characteristics or origins.
One could make a case for both parts of this definition. While weโre not technically related, there is a physical biochemical connection between our bodies and water, as our lives ultimately depend on water for our existence. Thus โblood relationshipโ takes a literal dimension: healthful when we talk of life-sustaining properties; harmful when we talk about, for instance, toxicity due to water pollution. The negatives are often of our own doing, caused by abuse or neglect of our โkinโ impacting our bodies in negative ways with disease. It is a kinship of reciprocity, reflecting a link between our treatment of our โkinโ and how it is tied physically to our survival.
The second definition here is most compelling, diving into our deeper emotional relationship with water. The โsharing of characteristics or originsโ resonates powerfully with our relationship with water. This summer I read the 2023 posthumously published dialogue with Barry Lopez and writer Julia Martin titled Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects. Much of the discussion focused on how Lopez engaged that kinship early in life through language, as a way to know, only later in life, expanding the relationship through a deeper dive into โsyntaxโ to develop understanding and attain wisdom.
An excerpt from his elaborates on this idea:
โI think when youโre young you want to learn the names of everything. This is a beaver, this is spring Chinook, this is a rainbow trout, this is osprey, elk over there. But itโs the syntax that you really are after. Anybody can develop the vocabulary. Itโs the relationships that are important. And itโs the discerning of this three-dimensional set of relationships that awakens you to how complex this is at any one moment.โ
The only way to develop these three-dimensional relationships is through consistent contact, which requires occupation of and awareness of place. As he visits and revisits his local McKenzie River, he partakes in constant unfolding. He notes some of these observations: โThe water has a slightly different color during the four seasons, depending on how much snow and glacial melt is in it. And the parts of the river that are not visible in the summer are visible in the winter, because of the loss of leaves of deciduous trees.โ
This connection with water, as Lopez describes it, requires spending time physically interacting with these environments, and conducting actual visits with our โkinโ to deepen ties. The wrinkle here is how we adapt this approach for the โlostโ or โforgottenโ, those hidden streams and buried waterways that no longer have a discernable physical presence. The relationship is no longer about observation in the present but about memory. This perhaps is similar to thinking about our lost kin, to think of lost streams in terms of death. In this way. This could be a way to reframe the relationship as grief and loss, allowing us to draw from the deep well of resources to rethink how we remember and celebrate those lost relationships.
Iโm reminded of one of the origin stories of Hidden Hydrology, with author David James Duncan recounting a tale in his fabulous book โMy Story As Told By Waterโ, of the death of one of his favorite fishing spots in his stomping grounds east of Portland:
โAt six-thirty or so on a rainy April morning, I crept up to a favorite hole, threaded a worm on a hook, prepared to cast โ then noticed something impossible: there was no water in the creek. โฆI began hiking, stunned, downstream. The aquatic insects were gone, barbershop crawdads gone, catfish, carp, perch, crappie, bass, countless sacrificial cutthroats, not just dying, but completely vanished. Feeling sick, I headed the opposite way, hiked the emptied creekbed all the way to the source, and there found the eminently rational cause of the countless killings. Development needs roads and drainfields. Roads and drainfields need gravel. Up in the gravel pits at the Glisan Street headwaters, the creekโs entire flow had been diverted for months in order to fill two gigantic new settling ponds. My favorite teacher was dead.โ
It is sometimes challenging to think of hidden hydrology through the lens of grief, but you can feel Duncanโs pain at the loss of this urban creek. Itโs one cut in the death of a thousand cuts that makes up the global tragedy โ the devastation wrought throughout the world on waterbodies in the name of progress. However, the impact is muted for several reasons. First, we, unlike Duncan, are often not around when most of these creeks and streams existed in the first place, so we donโt comprehend what we lost. Second, there are remnants and surviving resources that we can still connect within our cities, so the erasure is not complete enough to equal extinction. Finally, these places fade from memory, and, out of sight, out of mind, we forget as we trod over their buried pipes and filled depression blissfully unaware.
When we lack a strong presence of these historical remnants, we tend to feel greater disconnection, the subtle traces not sufficient for us to feel a connection. This drives our need to reveal and reconnect using a variety of methods: artistic, metaphorical, and ecological. This is hidden hydrology as a practice: the reason for us to study old maps, trace the lines of old creeks, and attempt to restore kinship.
Hidden hydrological features, unlike humans, can physically be restored and brought back to life in a sense. Beyond just memory, we have the potential for rebirth, through our creative endeavors: historical ecology mapping, painting the routes of streams on roadways, ecological restoration, and daylighting. โBack from the deadโ seems a morbid way to think of the processes of restoration, but it gives us the ability to reconnect and restore.
Several other themes can intersect and expand this idea. I recently re-read a portion of Braiding Sweetgrass, where Robin Wall Kimmerer talks of the Grammar of Animacy. I am struck by the similar themes of kinship, as she discusses how we relate to and reference these ecological systems. An excerpt from an Orion article from 2017, โRobin Wall Kimmerer on the Language of Animacyโ hints at this idea:
If itโs just stuff, we can treat it any way that that we want. But if itโs family, if itโs beings, if theyโre other persons we have ecological compassion for themโฆ Speaking with the grammar of animacy brings us all into this circle of moral consideration. Whereas when we say โit,โ we set those beings, those โthings,โ as they say, outside of our circle of moral responsibility.โ
We connect our morality to things we understand. Another theme that this also evokes is the writings of Robert Macfarlane, particularly when he speaks of language and how words connect us to the natural world, another form of โkinshipโ. I wrote eons ago about this lost language of nature, including Macfarlane and Anne Whiston Spirn, both of who also have written about lost rivers. Along with Lopez and Kimmerer, these authors prod us to rethink our ability to connect with our kin, hidden or visible, degraded or pristine.
Iโm curious to hear your thoughts on how we can develop and expand these relationships, our โkinshipโ, specifically with places no longer visible and viable. Are there good examples you know of where lost relationships have been reestablished? Do you feel a kinship or even see this as a goal, with other species or with the wider landscape?
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/06/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
The Pacific Northwest has long been one of the innovation hubs for green infrastructure solutions. Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver have been leaders for over two decades in developing innovative options to manage stormwater in urban environments, creating decentralized solutions such as green streets, rain gardens, green roofs, and permeable pavings that have now become standard solutions and spread widely to regions.
In places with high rainfall, the initial drivers for these solutions were managing stormwater and reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs) where rain and sewage mix in pipes, which, in extreme events, overflows into waterways creating pollution issues. The importance of green infrastructure has grown to include multifaceted outcomes, helping mitigate climate impacts by reducing flooding and providing shade to reduce urban heat, and providing โgreenโ solutions over โgreyโ, increasing habitat and helping minimize biodiversity loss.
Thinking strategically about where these solutions are built is key to success. Looking beyond site-specific and one-off strategies, the goal is to provide larger overarching frameworks for how these strategies are planned to work together to achieve holistic results, and ways to plan for these interventions. โHow Rainways Could Restore โRaincouverโโ (The Tyee, August 24, 2023) highlights some of the recent work in Vancouver. What they refer to as โRainwaysโ are the green infrastructure interventions that have been proposed by City and community groups going back to 2012 built around water in the city and ways to discover and celebrate it.
St. George Rainway illustration (City of Vancouver, The Tyee)
The St. George Rainway is another precursor to some of the work. It was studied and determined that true creek daylighting would be a challenge, due to infrastructure and costs, however, there were other ways to functionally and metaphorically restore the essence of buried creeks through green infrastructure and art. Neighbors have implemented several interventions, including street murals that follow the meandering route of the old creek.
To further visualize the potential benefits, the team here are some good before and after visuals on the site, transforming asphalt into rain gardens with pathways and plantings.
For a deep dive, the Rain City Strategy is a comprehensive document published in 2019 to celebrate water and address environmental and social challenges. The basis is green infrastructure in the city, using streets and public spaces, buildings and sites, and parks and beaches. The overall goals are water quality, resilience, and livability. This includes the management of stormwater to protect and increase water quality, facilitate infiltration, and become more adaptable to climate impacts by mitigating flooding. Beyond function, creating spaces that provide equitable access to nature and benefits to the community are inherent in solutions, assuring they arenโt just solving one problem but many.
The report includes references to the original buried and disappeared streams that existed before urbanization. These maps build on the work going back almost 50 years to research done by Sharon Proctor in her book โVancouverโs Old Streamsโ, published in 1978 with a sweet hand-drawn version of the map below (read more about this in my 2016 post โVancouverโs Secret Waterwaysโ).
The execution of more formal St George Rainway design concepts is available from 2022, showing how the concepts are applied to the segments of St. George Street, with plans and sketches illuminating the proposed condition.
The holistic proposal of looking at the macro-level buried rivers as the genesis for these community interventions. The benefits of the designs are manifold, as noted in the project summary:
Reduce street flooding
Treat rainwater pollutants from roadways
Reduce combined sewer overflows into local waterways
Enhance climate resiliency
Increase biodiversity
Cool the neighbourhood during summer heat
CODA
Itโs great to see this connection between hidden hydrology and innovative stormwater solutions take shape in such an intentional way. In the past, cities have looked at these buried stream routes in locating facilities and creating smaller sub-watersheds. For some background, in a presentation back in 2006 at the National ASLA conference, I did a presentation entitled โNeighborsheds for Green Infrastructureโ, where I made a case for using the routing of buried streams as a framework to implement green infrastructure solutions in Portland, Oregon. Iโll dig up some of these ideas and repost them, as they may be worth revisiting, in the meantime, I mention it in part of my introductory โEcological Inspirationsโ post at HH (see image below). Stay tuned for more on this.
Neighborshed Diagram from 2006 in Portland (Jason King)
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/03/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.
Strong connections exist between hidden hydrology and the larger work of historical ecology, in terms of methodology and the work to piece together complete stories from fragments of disparate sources. Often the traces of historical waterways inform the larger ecological patterns of places to establish baseline conditions, and historic vegetation patterns, and begin to establish markers to document change. The overlay of indigenous occupation is an additional element, however, it is often hard to reconstruct due to a lack of physical documentation. Examples of projects successfully implementing this type of work are valuable case studies.
A recent article, “Tribal leaders and researchers have mapped the ancient โlost suburbsโ of Los Angeles” (Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2023) explores a successful process, highlighting work by groups using these techniques to study six village sites in the greater Los Angeles region. These โlost suburbsโ, in this case, are the original settlements and villages within the LA Basin, where, as noted in the article, “…culture thrived here for thousands of years amid a landscape of oak and walnut woodlands riven with waterways teeming with steelhead trout and prowled by wolves and grizzly bears.”
Ancient routes and key village locations (LA Times)
Three tribes, the Chumash, Tataviam, and Kizh-Gabrieleรฑo collaborated with diverse interdisciplinary academic researchers to piece together a tapestry of inhabitation, as noted in the LA Times article by one of the project leads, UCLA’s Travis Longcore: โWe had to dig deep for evidence of the great society buried under our modern empire of terraced and graded slopes, rivers sheathed in concrete, industrial development, freeways and sprawl.โ
These provide a trail of evidence to follow for appropriate ecological restoration and responses to climate change. Hidden hydrology is one essential key to the understanding of these ancient places. From the LA Times: “One map reveals the locations of streams, wetlands, vernal pools, and tidal flats that were buried or drastically altered to accommodate urban development.”
Comparison of development impacts on waterways (LA Times)
This is a part of the full historical ecology of the region discussed in the following section. Understanding the pre-colonization waterways allows for restoring places informed by an authentic indigenous history. As noted by Matt Vestuto, one of the collaborators from the Barbareno/Ventureno Band of Mission Indians:
“…the mapping project offers hope for a long overdue reappraisal of Native American history… Almost overnight, we were disenfranchised from the landscape โ but our people are still here… now, the challenge is to restore the environment, and rebuild our nations.โ
โDescriptions of the historical landscape patterns and function have led to a conclusion that this landscape and region cannot be understood without listening to the stories of Indigenous people who managed this land and thrived for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers.โ
A key part of the work is cartographic regressions, which include reconstruction of the topographic history and hydrological patterns using old maps, aerial photography, and other archival sources, like texts, drawings, place names, historical accounts, and archaeological work. The analyses look closely at trade networks, historical flora and fauna distributions, and their impact on habitat, and provide the blueprint for future restoration. As noted in the Executive Summary:
โThis project is unique because a commonly shared, detailed map of the historical ecologyโthe flora, fauna, hydrology, and landforms, that evolved within Southern Californiaโs Mediterranean climate over millennia and supported human populations for 9,000 years, has never been developed. Individually and cumulatively, the results of this research are vital resources to all regional and local planning efforts involving sustainability, habitat restoration, and preparing for climate change.โ
Story Maps
An interactive Story Map is also worth checking out, providing a visual executive summary of the report. Focusing on the section related to Historical Water Features, the team traces stream routes in intervals, including 1896-1903 and 1924-1941, with the ability to compare, via slider, the two time periods as shown below, and highlights the radical change of regional hydrological patterns as the city developed.
The citywide mapping of vegetation types is directly related to these original historical waterways, and an interactive map, based on the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), using a 1km grid, to provide map data in cells of potential natural vegetation (PNV). This is described in the Story Map as the โโฆvegetation that would develop in a particular ecological zone or environment, assuming the conditions of flora and fauna to be natural, if the action of man on the vegetation mantle stopped and in the absence of substantial alteration in present climatic conditions.โ
Map of Hypothesized Potential Natural Vegetation of the Los Angeles Region (LALAH Story Map)
The connections between hidden hydrology, historical ecology, and indigenous occupation are more than just understanding the past. As the researchers point out, the ability to employ this data for solutions to loss of biodiversity, climate change impacts, and other challenges, while celebrating the cultural legacy of place, is key. Thereโs a wealth of information worth studying this model in more depth, to better understand the Los Angeles Basin ecology and hydrology and to refine and adapt this approach to other regions, specifically centering Indigenous stories as a key component in historical ecology work.
Thanks for reading Hidden Hydrology! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/01/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.
The most recent October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) has a great story on hidden hydrology inspiration Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, titledย Where the Water Was, which highlights the “long arc” her work in West Philadelphia, namely the “water that flows beneath it.”
The aha moment is recounted in the article, the inspiration for the poem linked above “The Yellowwood and the Forgotten Creek“, as recounted in the article, she “was on her way to the supermarket, when she was stopped at a gaping hole where the street had caved in over the Mill Creek sewer.ย “I looked down and saw this big, brown rushing river, and all this masonry that had fallen in. I thought, ‘My God, there are rivers underground. We’re walking on a river.'” (122)ย ย Sprin’s work spans decades since that story in 1971, predominately around Mill Creek which was “buried in the brick sewer pipe in the 1880s”, morphing into the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP) [covered in brief on our post on Philadelphia here].ย While I was inspired as a student and professional by her work on books like The Landscape of Landscape and The Granite Garden, her work on hidden streams was perhaps the most powerful for me, both as an object of study but more broadly to leverage this research into a vehicle for positive change.ย As mentioned, the WPLP website “contains maps, historical documents, reports and studies.” including an updated interactive timeline, and some newer updated interactive mapping which is good to see, as much of the interface until late was a bit dated.
A long way from the preliminary maps in CAD as part of the early mapping in the late 1980s and early 1990s.ย The sophistication and breadth of this work at the time is telling thought, and I remember seeing these for the first time in college and being amazed.ย The article shows what many of us know, which is how much of what we take for granted in technology of mapping that’s available to us today, and how hard it was, physically and sometimes politically to get good information.ย As Spirn mentions “You had to literally go out and field check.” (134)
The takeaways of this early work was to both connect the above ground with what was underground, both historically in predevelopment hydrology but also with sewer routing and burial of waterways.ย As mentioned, the idea that is a constant with Spirn of “reading the landscape” was instilled as a way to understand the full picture of a site or district.ย The connection of the physical features with the social is also evident as Spirn is quoted:ย “It’s a pattern of eastern old cities and across the U.S., where lower-income folks are living in the bottomlands… Many are literally called the Black Bottom.” (126)ย ย From this analysis, the idea of mapping and using vacant lands was a way to solve the hydrological problems of flooding or sinkholes, but also to revitalize communities.
How to do it was an issue, as recounted in the article, ideas where one thing, but changing minds into action was another.ย McHarg’s Design With Nature inspired her writing The Granite Garden, not as an academic treatise, but rather “…to fill a void.ย Scientific journals, historical documents, topographic maps, all sorts of materials contained a wealth of information for ecological designers, but no one had pulled it together in a comprehensive, understandable book that could guide designers as well as the public.”ย ย (127)ย This book influences generations of landscape architects in many ways beyond merely historical ecology, but in how we think and communicate.ย ย For the project itself,ย Adam Levine (who is the mind behind the PhillyH20 project which i documented previously) found the 19th Century maps “that showed Mill Creek and its tributaries before the land was developed. Spirn’s students digitized those surveys and overlaid them on the city’s topographic maps, finally getting an accurate depth of fill along the floodplain. “We found it’s buried up to 40 feet in some areas…”” (134)
The actions were part of this research as well, and many interesting strategies came from the Vacant Lands report (see here), as well as a number of other projects, many of which took a long time to become reality, or came with ups and downs of poor implementation or.ย The successes came, owing to the persistence of Spirn and her local compatriots in West Philadelphia, summed up in the article simply:
“Change is a bit like a buried creek. It’s hard to remember its origins. Its many branchings are invisible.” (137)
The legacy locally is a series of activists still working on landscape and community building.ย Beyond that, there’s an army of landscape architects inspired by this project and her writings, and her life-long spirit of advocacy.ย A great homage to a wonderful teacher and landscape hero.ย Lots of great info in the article – which unfortunately isn’t available digitally at this time.
HEADER:ย Snapshot of Interactive Map of Mill Creek – via
A follow-up to the previous post allows for a bit more expansion on the fundamental sources for New York City.ย This includes theย Welikia Project and it’s beginnings as Mannahatta, as well as the comprehensive book by Sergey Kadinsky on the Hidden Waters of New York City.ย We delved deep with Steve Duncan’s sewer explorations and blog Watercourses and Undercity,ย Together these make up a solid fundamental base of hidden hydrology work in New York City.ย This also complements some of the projects I’ve covered, including the project Calling Thunder, which evoked the power of historical ecology via animation, the explorations around hidden infrastructure of photographerย Stanley Greenberg, and some of the walks and installations focused on hidden streams with artistย Stacey Levy.
That said, there’s still much more, so a postscript is in order to provide a bit of additional context to even claim to be a passable (although not even close to comprehensive) review of some of the city, with a focus on including some tours, art, history, and more.
SOME TOURS
One aspect of any place is explorations, and there is no shortage of tours around hydrology in New York City.ย The group NYC H2O is a great resource for this, with a mission “…to inspire and educate New Yorkers of all ages to learn about, enjoy and protect their cityโs local water ecology.”ย They’ve hosted some great events in the past year alone, including tours with Steve Duncan, Sergey Kadinsky, and artist Stacey Levy as well as many others.ย City as a Living Laboratory (evolved out of the work of artist Mary Miss) also provides some great events, includeย walks, such as this one exploring the past and future ofย Tibbetts Brook with Eric Sanderson and others.
There are some less formal characters as well, likeย local activist Mitch Waxman, featured here in a NY Times article from June 2012, “Your Guide to a Tour of Decay”.ย The article shows how he discovers, teaches and advocates about the hidden history of Newtown Creekย in Queens, where, as quoted in the article: “โYou have these buried secrets,โ he said, explaining the thinking behind the occult conceit. Heโs spotted early-19th-century terra-cotta pipes protruding from bulkheads, antique masonry sewers connected to who knows what. He added: โThere really is no telling whatโs in the ground there.โ
And, for a somewhat related example, there’s always the amazing precedent of Safari 7, a self-guided subway based audio tour and map that highlightedย “…urban wildlife along New York Cityโs 7 subway line”.ย ย A map of the guide is found below.
SOME ART
In terms of some hidden hydrology based art installations, there are many that span permanent to ephemeral.ย In the site specific realm, isย Collect Pond Park, which was located in Manhattan historically asย “…a large, sixty-foot deep pool fed by an underground spring” that was filled in the early 1800s.ย A post here by Kadinsky & Kevin Walsh on Forgotten New York discusses the project and includes this rendering that highlights the interpretation of previous pond in the design of the new park. This includes a “…footbridge spanning the pondโs waist hearkens to the original pondโs shape, providing a historical link to a pond that has had such a huge role in the cityโs history, before and after its burial.”
Another site is a fountain at Albert Capsouto Park, which references some hidden hydrology. From the Parks website:ย ย “The centerpiece of Capsouto Park is a 114-foot long sculptural fountain by SoHo artist Elyn Zimmerman. This fountain bisects the interior space. Water spills from an 8-foot tower into a series of stepped โlocksโ evoking the canal that once flowed along the Canal Street. A sunning lawn rises up to meet the fountain from the south and granite seat walls adorn the fountain to the north.”
Capsouto Park Water Feature, 2009 – Elyn Zimmerman & Gail Wittwer-Laird
We discussed previously some of the hidden hydrology art of Stacey Levy, which was the tip of the iceberg of vibrant art scene in NYC interpreting hydrology as the medium.ย One larger effort worth noting is Works on Water, which isย “…an organization and triennial exhibition dedicated to artworks, theatrical performances, conversations, workshops and site-specific experiences that explore diverse artistic investigation of water in the urban environment.”ย Their mission statement by the team sums up the potential:
“New York City has 520 miles of coastline. Its waterways are often referred to as โThe Sixth Boroughโ. We are artists and curators dedicated to working with water to bring new awareness to the public of the issues and conditions that impact their environment through art.”
The sum of work there is worthy of it’s own future post.ย In the interim, a few of the key contributors to Works on Water have their own complementary endeavors, such asย Liquid City, a water based project by artist Eve Mosher, a self proclaimed “…water geek, urban enthusiast and playworker in training”,ย whom is “…fascinated by our waterways, the space they inhabit the roles they play in our daily life and finding ways to create a greater engagement across disciplines and a greater awareness in the public narrative.”
Liquid City: Currents (Eve Mosher)
Her project aims to be the followingย ย “1. Aย research database of collected resources and video stories of people working on the urban waterways. An open source compendium for creative inspiration,ย ย 2. Anย interdisciplinary floating think tank/lab working on creative interventions about the urban waterways, and 3.ย Aย traveling think tank/lab sharing resources, traveling the Great Loopโs urban waterways.”ย ย A fascinating work on her site is theย Waterways System Map below (click the link for the fully interactive version) which involves “mapping the existing system of the waterways”ย in extraordinary detail.
Below is another of Mosher’s project, fromย ย exhibit:ย “As part of Works on Water, I collaborated withย Clarinda Mac Lowย to create a large scale floor painting of the NY waterways. Intended to ground people in the specific site of water as material within the exhibition, the waterways acted as a guide into the exhibition space.ย ย Overlaid on the waterways was a video in which I represented the historic waterways and Clarinda imagined the futureโฆ”
A different project led byย Kira Appelhans, adjunct assistant professor, Integrated Designย Curriculum, Parsons The New School andย Richard Karty, postdoctoral fellow in Environmentalย Studies, from 2011 is entitledย Waterlogged.ย The endeavor “…explores the process of mark-making in the landscape from glacial to hydrologic to human.ย We will examine the existence of remnant waterways and their relationship to the cityโs organizational patterns and forms.ย ย Using printmaking, restoration ecology, public space design we will explore the ecological impact of the intersection of historic waterways and urban infrastructure.”ย The diverse artworks are captured inย a video as well as a booklet ‘Remnant Waterways‘ (pdf) which showcases the work of students, including prints inspired by buried streams.
Iteration 3 – Eve Neves
Print by Mikaela Kvan
In the realm of photography, the work of Stanley Greenberg and Steve Duncan show two sides of underground New York City, and photographer Nathan Kensinger, who investigates “The Abandoned & Industrial Edges of New York City” shows a third.ย He has an ongoing series entitled “New York’s Forgotten Rivers” where he has been documenting “New York Cityโsย last remaining aboveground rivers and streams, in all five boroughs.”ย An image below shows one of these photos.
Another recent exhibition “To Quench the Thirst of New Yorkers: The Croton Aqueduct at 175” that just completed it’s run at the Museum of the City of New York, offers a similar theme, with the tag line: “Uncover the hidden history of New Yorkโs original water source, buried beneath the city”, it features “…newly commissioned photographs by Nathan Kensinger, tracing the aqueductโs route and revisiting sights that Tower had sketched nearly two centuries before.”
Shifting from the visual to the literary, I previous mentioned the great Robert Frost poem covered in Hidden Waters blog, focused on Minetta Creek.ย Another literary reference worth a look is this 1998 poem by Jim Lampos “Gowanus Canal” about the partially hidden and very polluted waterway in Brooklyn.ย The whole thing is worth a perusal in detail, but I was struck by this passage, which evokes some of the history of place so acutely:
“Iโve come with a notionย Old Gowanus, to recollectย the splinters of dreamsย and severed fingersย youโve tucked away,ย the stolen pistolsย and sunken treasuresย youโve savedย the piss, tearsย dreams and sweatย youโve claimed.ย Recollect–shitty Canalย stinking to the heavens–ย that you were once a riverย and hills rose from bothย your banks.ย Brooklyn Heightsย nourished you as it returnedย your borrowed waters sweetenedย with the blood of revolution.ย A city was builtย all around you–ย a city of pizza parlors, churches andย Whitman.ย A city of pigeons,ย ice factories and hit men.”
SOME HISTORY
Tons of possibilities to cover in the history genre, as New York City has a million stories, In picking a few, I decided to focus on the ones that rose to the top due to their sheer uniqueness.ย The one that was amazing to read about comes via Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG, referencing a complicated series ofย posts about Fishing in the Basements of Manhattanย that goes back to the NY Times blog ‘The Empire Zone’ and eventually a post link to a comment from 1971 Letter to the Editor, which mentions this potentially tall tale:
“”…We had a lantern to pierce the cellar darkness and fifteen feet below I clearly saw the stream bubbling and pushing about, five feet wide and up-on its either side, dark green mossed rocks. This lively riverlet was revealed to us exactly as it must have appeared to a Manhattan Indian many years ago.ย ย With plum-bob and line, I cast in and found the stream to be over six feet deep. The spray splashed up-wards from time to time and standing on the basement floor, I felt its tingling coolness.ย ย One day I was curious enough to try my hand at fishing. I had an old-fashioned dropline and baited a hook with a piece of sperm-candle. I jiggled the hook for about five minutes and then felt a teasing nibble. Deep in the basement of an ancient tenement on Second Avenue in the heart of midtown New York City, I was fishing.ย ย Feeling a tug, I hauled up in excitement and there was a carp skipping before me, an almost three pounder. I was brave enough to have it pan-broiled and buttered in our upstairs kitchen and shared it with my brother…”
Going way back, a few folks referenced what seems an interesting resource, “Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City: At the End of the Nineteenth Century” by James Reuel Smith, in 1938, inย which“…he reflects on the rapidly changing city and on the practical and aesthetic pleasures offered by the remaining springs:ย โIn the days, not so very long ago, when nearly all the railroad mileage of the metropolis was to be found on the lower half of the Island, nothing was more cheering to the thirsty city tourist afoot or awheel than to discover a natural spring of clear cold water, and nothing quite so refreshing as a draught of it.โย
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified woman drinking at Carman Spring, on W. 175th Street east of Amsterdam Avenue, New York City. undated [c. 1897-1902]. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
Other short reads include Thomas J. Campanella’s essay in Terrain.org, “The Lost Creek”, and a great article connecting west to east worth from Nathan Kensinger, “What Can NYC Learn from San Francisco’s Last Wild Creeks?” where he looks at Islais Creek (and of course includes some amazing photos) as a model for how aboveground creeks can be a model.ย He summarizes: “Flowing through an increasingly gentrified city,…this historic stream offers up a refreshingly untamed landscape. Though it travels just five miles from its headwaters in Glen Canyon to its mouth in the San Francisco Bay, and is bisected by a three mile underground segment, Islais Creek provides critical support to two radically different natural environments, both of which are currently undergoing extensive renovations. It also illustrates several approaches to urban planning that are unfamiliar to most New York City waterways.”
Islais Creek – photo by Nathan Kensiger, via Curbed NY
SOME MISCELLANY
With any discussion of hidden hydrology, the concept of daylighting always emerges as certain projects seem to lend themselves to this approach.ย A presentation by Steve Duncan is worth a read as it covers this topic in depth, and the project with the most traction is Tibbets Brook, in the Bronx.ย Located in Van Cortland Park, the daylighting push garnered a fair amount of press (here, here) and also a petition, with a detailed coverage in Untapped Cities from 2016ย which shows an image from a reportย “Daylight Tibbetts Brook” (PDF file – from Siteation).ย A figure from the report shown below identifies a potential route of the daylighted creek.
Before and After views of daylighted creek
Another final item worth discussing, albeit removed from hidden hydrology explcitly, is the image of climate change on the city.ย We cover this in the context of modern New York via Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York: 2140, which imagines a flooded, post-catastrophe New York with, a narrativeย of New York as a “SuperVenice”, rife with political upheaval, class warfare, and and salvage operations referencing historic maps — setting the stage for a new geography that is equally fantastical and plausible.ย As mentioned in the New Yorker:
“Another narratorโa nameless urban historianโtells the story of New York from a bohemian point of view. Americaโs boring losers all moved to Denver, he says, and so the cool kids took over the coasts. โSquatters. The dispossessed. The water rats. Denizens of the deep, citizens of the shallows.โ The abandoned city becomes an experimental zoneโa place where social innovation (โsubmarine technoculture,โ โart-not-work,โ โamphibiguityโ) flourishes alongside โfree open universities, free trade schools, and free art schools. Not uncommonly all of these experiences were being pursued in the very same building. Lower Manhattan became a veritable hotbed of theory and practice, like it always used to say it was, but this time for real. . . . Possibly New York had never yet been this interesting.”
The connections between this fictionalization and the changing climate that could lead to more frequent flood events, seems a timely connection between history (past) and what it means now and into our our future.ย The story told by Robinson may be a bit lacking in places, but the details and context is compelling.
The vision of a flooded city in โNew York 2140,โ a science-fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, is surprisingly utopian. via New Yorker
As you can see, there are literally hundreds of links for particular creeks, art, history, explorations, tours, and other discussions around New York City.ย My original goal was to also include maps in this post, but as you can see it’s already bursting at the seams, so I will conclude New York with one additional post focused on the cartographic as to not overwhelm.
HEADER:ย Bronx River, image by Nathan Kensinger as part of his New York’s Forgotten Rivers series.
As I mentioned, New York City and the larger metropolitan region is an important case study in hidden hydrology, with a range of interesting activities spanning urban ecology, history, open space, art, subterranean exploration, and much more.ย As a city with a long and vibrant history it’s not surprising that the story of water would be equally compelling.ย The following few posts will expand on some of the key activities that shape the hidden hydrology of the city.
Times Square then and now: the area featured a red-maple swamp frequented by beavers, wood ducks, and elk. – via the New Yorker
The publication of the ideas with the publication of the Mannahatta bookย (originally out in 2009 and with new printing in 2013) and this broader work by Eric Sanderson (and his very well loved TED Talk) and crew on visualizing and creating rich data landscapes for Manhattan and the larger region is constantly compelling, and the shift to a broader scope under the name The Welikia Project in 2010 was really exciting to see.
The Welikia Projectexpands theย provides a rich and well documented study of the historical and ecological study of New York City dating back over 400 years and inclusive of a range of interpretation from art, ecology, and design.ย The overview of Welikia here provides a much longer and more complete synopsis of the project, but I’ll pick some of the interesting ideas I think are worth of discussion in information larger ideas about hidden hydrology.
The main page offers a range of options that the project provides.ย Per the overview page, “The Welikia Projectย (2010 โ 2013) goes beyond Mannahatta to encompass the entire city, discover its original ecology and compare it what we have today…ย The Welikia Project embraces the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the waters in-between, while still serving up all we have learned about Mannahatta.ย Welikia provides the basis for all the people of New York to appreciate, conserve and re-invigorate the natural heritage of their city not matter which borough they live in.”
Tools include some downloads include curriculum for teachers to use, and some publications and data also available which would be fun to explore more.ย A few notable bits of info worth exploration is this page “How to Build a Forgotten Landscape from the Ground Up”, which is a nice overview of the methodology used by the Welikia team, and provides a nice blueprint for organization of data that is transferable to any locale.
The original historical 1782 British Headquarters map was the genesis of any number of overlays that, once digitized into GIS, provided a historic base to layer additional information from other sources, along with inferences by professional ecologists and other members of the team.ย These were also able to be georeferenced, which allows for the overlay of historic to modern geography, which becomes the basis for some of the larger interactive mapping we’ll see a bit later.ย A map series from the Welikia site demonstrates the layering and aggregation possible.
This Muir Web shows all the habitat relationships for all the species on Mannahatta. Visualization by Chris Harrison of Carnegie-Mellon University. ยฉWCS
Welikia Map Explorer –ย Lots of interesting background that I’ve literally barely scratched the surface of.ย As I mentioned, the beauty of Mannahatta was the visualization of the historic surface, and through mapping with georeferenced location, provided an easy opportunity to create overlay maps of historic and modern.ย The key part of this project is the Welikia Map Explorer, which offers a simple interface that can unlock tons of information.ย Starting out, you have a full panned out view of the 1609 map visualization for Manhattan.
By selecting an address or zooming, you can isolate locations or just navigate.ย It’s got that same video game quality I mentioned in my recent post about the DC Water Atlas, with some exploratory zooming and flying around the landscape looking at the creeks, wetlands and other area, you half expect to click and launch some next part of a non-linear exploration game.ย ย The detail is amazing, and the juxtaposition between the very urban metropolis of New York City with this lush, pre-development landscape is striking both in plan, as well as some of the 3D renderings above.
You can then select any block and it will pop up a box that allows you to access lots of data underneath on a smaller level.
The interface provides layers of site specific data, and breaks down items like Wildlife, potential presence of Lenape (original native inhabitants, and Landscape Metrics.ย “Welcome to a wild place: this block in 1609! Through the tabs below, discover the wildlife, Native American use, and landscape factors of this block’s original ecology, as reconstructed by the Mannahatta Project. You can also explore the block today and sponsor the Mannahatta Project into the future.”
The Modern Day tab relates back to OASIS maps of the modern condition, making the connection of specific places easy to discern. “Landscapes never disappear, they just change. Click on the image below to see this block today through the New York City Open Accessible Space Information System (OASIS) and learn about open space and other contemporary environmental resources.”
For the beautiful simplicity of the map, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is dense with real data and models that attempt to provide a real viewpoint to what each parcel was like 400+ years in the past.ย We discuss baseline conditions much in design, stormwater, ecology and habitat studies, and this level of evidence-based, site scale data is so important to decisonmaking not just in terms of former waterways, but in restoration and management of spaces.ย This is summed up on the site:
“An important part of the Mannahatta Project is not leaving ecology in the past, but to appreciate it in our current times, to see how we can liveย in waysย that are compatible withย wildlife and wild places andย that will sustain peopleย and planet Earthย for the next 400 years.”
Visonmaker.NYC –ย Of the more recent expansions of this is the creation of Visionmaker NYC, which “allows the public to develop and share climate-resilient and sustainable designs for Manhattan based on rapid model estimates of the water cycle, carbon cycle, biodiversity and population. Users can vary the ecosystems, lifestyles, and climate of the city in an effort to find and publish sustainable and resilient visions of the city of the future.”
Worthy of a full post on it’s own, the idea is to emphasize the link between the Mannahatta era of 1609, the current era four centuries later, around 2009, and a future world into the future another 400 years in 2049.ย This gives a great opportunity to create a key linkages between historical work, current scenarios, and future conditions.
As they mention: “A vision is a representation of a part of New York City as you envison it. You select an area and can changeย the ecosystems – buildings, streets, and natural environments – as well as the climate and the lifestyleย choices that people living in that area make.” and you can also view other published visions done by users of all ages.ย The interface is similar to Welikia, as it allows an overlay of layers with varying transparency for comparison.
More on this as I dive in a bit, but you can also watch a more recent 2013ย TEDxLongIslandCity video shows this tool in more detail:
The mapmaking is of course pretty awesome, and they keep posting new visualizations and updates, such as this 1609 topo map, posted via Twitter via @welikiaproject on the “Preurban (year 1609) topography and elevation of #NYC”
There was also some great local quirky info, such as this map and historic photo showing perhaps the strangest remnant geological remnant in a city I’ve seen.ย Via Twitter from December 2016, “29 Dec 2016ย “Rocky outcrops in NYC, were mostly concentrated in Manhattan and the Bronx and composed of schist and gneiss.”
You can and should also follow Sanderson viaย @ewsanderson , continuing his work at the Wildlife Conservation Society and to see him giving talks and tours around the City.ย A recent one mentioned that “After seven years of effort, he will share for the first time the digital elevation model of the pre-development topography his team has built, discuss why the climate and geology of the city together make our landscape conducive to streams and springs, give a borough by borough tour of ancient watersheds, and suggest how we can bring living water back to the stony city again.”ย
Sounds great, andย I wish sometimes to be a bit closer to be able to experience this around these parts.ย Continuing to inspire beyond Mannahatta to the broader Welikia Project, Sanderson and all the crew that make it a reality is a great example anywhere in the world of what’s possible in tracing the threads between history and contemporary environmental issues.ย If someone today gave me a chunk of money and said do this for Portland or Seattle or both (and honestly folks, we really should) I’d jump on it in a second.
A brief aside to contemplate the concept of hidden hydrology, both as a subject of study and as an agent for change.ย While I’ve been inspired by the concept for some time, I’ve only recently tried to formalize this, collecting information and starting this blog in September 2016.ย Call it my doctorate in Urban Studies that I never finished, happening over the web, with little to no outside supervision, mostly in my free time from 10pm to the early hours of the morning.
I get mixed reactions when I mention the project, spanning a sort of incredulous ‘Why?’ to an excited “Wow!” with all variations in between. This concept is indicative of the root of my own journey and sometimes my struggle, being simultaneously inspired while trying to figure out what to do with information.ย On one hand, is just endlessly fascinating (others would agree), and my information gathering, generalist nature wants to find every detail there is to find. And while having an extensive collection of notes, images, maps and resources on my computer is satisfying in a way,ย it does lack a certain sense of purpose.ย ย On the other hand there’s sort of a perceptual disconnect with why any of this matters amidst the plethora of contemporary issues, and my productive landscape architect, designer, urbanist, cartogaphic, activist & ecological nature wants to connect this historical ecology to the greater issues of regenerative strategies of place.
Thus the tagline I originally came up withย is a shorthand for both a duality that hints at both potentials, and I think still inspiring:
Sometimes it just takes a while to figure out what an end game can look like, and you have to dive in and see where it takes you.ย I’m calling this, in the spirit of hydrological study, the Meanders, as I’ve titled this post, and it’s been fun to see it played out in presentations, dialogue, and writing with not really a set purpose or goal.ย I’ve had in my mind, beyond the blog, a book or series of books, perhaps which could be historical, design or urbanism or something spanning all.ย Also I have toyed with the idea of online atlas, an exploratory video game, a series of historical images superimposed on modern scenes, art installations, tours, and much more.ย I’m still working on the specifics of where it may lead, but realize it’s not one destination, but many.
At a foundational level the study will focus on Seattle and Portland, as a locus of study and between the two, a venue for comparative analysis and places I live and know well (and have easy regular access to).ย While both are Pacific Northwest cities that were founded around the same time (1850s), their evolution and histories diverged much due to geography, topography, and hydrology, with Portland built around rivers and Seattle shaped as a city tied to the oceans and lakes.ย Beyond this obvious dichotomy, there are a number of differences which will be part of, and perhaps fundamental to, the study.ย One of which is notably politics, which tends to shape place as much or more than those ‘natural’ forces, played.ย Maps of the two show the unique differences, and the ‘blank’ slate to be filled with oh, so much potential.
PORTLAND
SEATTLE
Thus the core will expand around these cities, and include a continual focus on Explorations, walking, recording, and connected with the experiences of what is gone and what still exists.ย The goal is to walk/map/explore every hidden stream in each city, and use this along with mapping and history to provide a documentation of hidden hydrology.ย ย While the focus will be on these two cities, there is so much information to bring from the wider base of knowledge that allows the analysis to be well informed.ย Seeing the immense depth and breadth of information that exists and all the forms it can take (which hopefully you’ve seen in these posts), there are ample bends and side channels for us to navigate – but the focus on these two places allows for focus energy for generation specific to place.ย This hopefully alleviates the danger of just continually searching and compiling information without acting.
In that vein, as precedents, in the past year, I’ve posted summaries of many cities focusing on hidden hydrology, including posts that study the inner workings of cities likeย Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Philadelphia, San FranciscoBay Area, Rome, Vancouver, Toronto, as well as bothย Portland and Seattle. to varying degrees. These are the the dozen or so “core cities”, which, along with New York City and London you’ll see in a bit, which have the most fully expansive studies ongoing for hidden hydrology.ย Each have activities and viewpoints that are specific to place, but all are tied together with connections between water, then and now.
Image of Rome – via Katherine Rinne, Aquae Urbis Romae
I’ve also touched on other areas around the globe, including Boston, Lexington, Munich, Montreal,ย Mexico Cityย and Venice, and will continue to offer smaller snapshots of other communities, as there are literally hundreds of fascinating stories to tell.ย These studies show a wide range of activities these projects take on, including art, tours, literature, advocacy, history, ecology and more, as well as the broad geographic reach of the concept of exploration, in its many forms, of hidden hydrology.
There will be many more posts to come come from all of this, but I wanted to add the two cities that have by far the most expansive and inspiring hidden hydrology efforts I’ve discovered to date: New York City and London.
New York City is one of the inspirations I’ve mentioned, with the Mannahatta project a lofty goal of mine to apply to my own home places, and the work done by others to document the hidden hydrology of the New York region is phenomenal.ย I’m looking forward to sharing more of this.
Mannahatta Visualization
And London, perhaps more than any other city, has been so well documented in terms of hidden hydrology, with countless books, maps, ruminations, explorations and more, each with a unique viewpoint and much rich history to draw from.ย ย Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to take multiple posts to sum this up with New York, as there’s a lot to cover.
A Balloon View of London, as seen from the north – via the British Library
Additionally, beyond continuing to document places as precedents, there are a bunch of fascinating topics which enrich these spatial stories, and also inform my own activities.ย I’m constantly inspired by artists using hidden hydrology as a medium, so will continue to include more examples, both site specific, and including techniques around soundscapes.
Light Meander – River based sculpture in Nashville byย Laura Haddad & Tom Drugan
The literary connections of historical waterways is worthy of discussion also, as another of the key inspirations come from both David James Duncan and Anne Whiston Spirn.ย The connections to language and place names that span cultures, and a thorough acknowledgment of colonization and appropriation is an important aspect of any historical endeavor. Mapping as a subject is vital to this study, including historical ecology and methodologies for mapping that uses new technologies to connect old and new and display these connections in inspiring ways.
Rectangular world map from Fatimid treatise, Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes, copy of manuscript originally written in the first half of the 11th century
The ecological and the hydrological are at the root of rivers, creeks, streams and watershed, providing a context for understanding the past and the present in terms of something this is ever changing, blending soils, geology, climate, ecology and understanding of aquatic systems to infer the historic and investigate opportunities for historical baselines as a metric for regeneration.ย This requires understanding the potential to restore, but also moving beyond ideas of daylighting as the only option we have, with a more nuanced and historically informed continuum which integrates, culture & art, ecology & habitat using design and science– restoring the key functions of urban streams in a form that evokes, mimics, and celebrates, but doesn’t rely on pure restoration for the original creeks.
Stories of place and process, maps and images, people and words, all aggregate, some sifting through and precipitating in eddies, others taken downstream by the force of the flow.ย ย Then again, all this could change.ย A meander overtopping its banks and connecting with another flow, carving out a new channel, or disconnecting and spinning idly in a lonely oxbow, driving via gravity in tension against rock, all the while creating life at its margins.ย Not a bad metaphor for a creative process.
The flow may have some direction now, but the nature is still, always, to meander.
