12th Jan2012

Landscape Urbanism + The Agency of Mapping

by Jason King

I am excited to be teaching again at University of Oregon in the White Stag Building in Portland, this time a seminar entitled ‘Landscape Urbanism + The Agency of Mapping’.

In this class, a combination of architecture and landscape architecture students are going to blend theory with on the ground techniques related to large-scale, landscape-focused urban analysis, planning and design.  The major technical components will focus on GIS mapping and using this as a tool for multidisciplinary design, as well as studying the agency of mapping (a major tenet of landscape urbanism theory) as a tool for communication and organization of complex spatial information.

The focus area will be the Cully Neighborhood in NE Portland and their plans for an eco-district, being initiated by Verde (www.verdenw.org) , a social justice nonprofit, as both a viable model of district strategies and as an alternative approach to the more mainstream ecodistricts planning happening in other areas throughout the city by POSI.  Students will do case studies and critiques of local and global district planning, determine community needs and collect data, then use mapping to elaborate and provide urban visions of Cully that focus on bottom-up scenarios for development of social justice, food security, job creation and community connectivity and less on top-down solutions.”

See more past classes here.

Category : announcements, community, landscape, landscape urbanism, mapping, planning, policy, portland, research, sustainability, teaching, theory, urbanism
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02nd Oct2011

European Vacation

by Jason King

The office was closed the second half of September to accommodate some long-awaited travels in Europe.  Journeys included London, Barcelona, Rome, and travels through Tuscany including Siena, Florence, Orvieto, and Assisi.   Regular posting to resume in October!

LONDON

BARCELONA

ROME


 

SIENA

 

ROME

Category : announcements, europe, history, images, thoughts, tours, travel, urbanism
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18th May2011

Lake Oswego Stormwater Design Guidelines

by Jason King

TERRA.fluxus is pleased to announce it’s involvement with the team, led by prime consultant Herrera Environmental Consultants, who was recently contracted by the City of Lake Oswego to update of the City’s stormwater codes and manual.   Along with TERRA.fluxus, Jeanne Lawson Associates is on the Herrera team to coordinate public involvement.

The project is just getting underway, and will continue over the next several months.  Specific scope for TERRA.fluxus will include assisting in development of a stormwater tour for information gathering, helping craft design guidelines, and development of landscape-specific elements to ensure stormwater facility designs meet the aesthetic expectations of local residents, and also reflect the community values of Lake Oswego.   This work builds on a solid foundation of experience in large-scale municipal planning, stormwater management design, and work associated with stormwater manuals.

Thanks to Herrera for making me a part of the team!

Category : announcements, community, environmental, landscape, planning, policy, projects, stormwater, sustainability, urbanism
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31st Mar2011

Got Urbanism?

by Jason King

In the upcoming April issue of Planning, the magazine of the American Planning Association, there is an interesting article by Jonathan Barnett, exploring the predominance of the use of the word ‘urbanism’ to describe the phenomena of the contemporary city.  Derived from a post on Landscape+Urbanism, – along with expanded conversations with PSU Professor Ethan Seltzer, fellow PSU Urban Studies student Allison Duncan, and landscape architecture colleague Brett Milligan -  Barnett takes this and gives shape to the range of terms, expanding and defining the range that exist – and hinting that even these 60 may just scratch the surface in common usage.

Category : announcements, landscape urbanism, planning, press, publications, urbanism, writing
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19th Mar2011

REWIND: Warner-Milne Raingarden Gateway

by Jason King

I had the recent opportunity to swing by an project (designed in 2009 while at GreenWorks) for the rain garden gateway along Warner-Milne Road in Oregon City, Oregon – which was installed last year.   A new roadway alignment created a wide area between the existing right-of-way and the new curb, allowing for the integration of a large green street feature to manage impervious surfaces.  In addition to the stormwater function, the location on one of the main roadways through Oregon City gave it the potential to act as a gateway for the municipal offices nearby.   Congrats to the City of Oregon City, GreenWorks PC, and Wallis Engineering for realizing this exciting project.

The implementation of large corten panels acted as vertical elements that were legible from the adjacent pedestrian and vehicular users.

 

These curving walls gave shape to the sinuous vegetated garden area, punctuated by arching stone weirs with two different gravel types delineating low and high flow conditions.


 

Project Credit:  GreenWorks PC, Wallis Engineering
Photos: Jason King

Category : announcements, environmental, green streets, installations, landscape, planting, projects, stormwater, sustainability, urbanism
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15th Feb2011

TERRA.fluxus Celebrates One Year Anniversary

by Jason King

Today is the official one-year anniversary in business.  A big thanks to all the collaborators, clients, partners, and others I’ve had a chance to work with in the past year.

The past year has been one of growth, with many built projects and more underway.  We’re in the process of adding to the portfolio online, as well as updating some new materials, including updated company profile and resumes.   Also, check out a list of projects by typology – to see the wide range of past and current work.  Looking forward to a wonderful second year.

Category : announcements, business, landscape, portland, projects, urbanism
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21st Jan2011

Hidden Hydrology Origins 3: Disappeared Streams Map

by Jason King

Over the next week, I have been outlining some of the inspirations and precedents related to the idea of Hidden Hydrology of Portland, as this project has been shaped and has evolves across many years to it’s present incarnation.  As I mentioned in the preliminary overview, one of the main inspirations was the map of ‘Disappeared Streams’ that was produced by Metro.  My first encounter with this map was during a presentation at DaVinci Arts middle school, as part of the preliminary planning for what would become their beautiful water garden.  At the time I was working with local non-profit Urban Water Works – and the students were showing off many of their water-related side projects, including hand-made flowforms, studies of water movement, and mapping.   One student had a GIS application that was showing the disappeared streams – which has stuck in my brain every since.  Metro now publishes it in map form – available at the Data Resource Center – along with many other great maps.

As I mentioned there are a few methodological caveats to this map – as it is not a historical representation of actual streams, but looking more specifically at locations of potential water routes.  From the map, some of this language:

“Development patterns in the Metro region have historically resulted in piping, culverting, or filling of streams and stream beds.  A computer mapping program was used to evaluate the terrain in the region, and to generate areas where major streams (those draining 50+ acres of land) may once have existed.  While this does not represent an authoritative analysis, it does visually describe the effects of urbanization on the regions natural systems.  This exercise indicates that an estimated 388 miles of previously existing streams are now underground.”

The coding of the map is pretty striking (the choice of ‘blood’ red I think fitting) when viewed as a whole (above) particularly noting the core area of Portland that has been denuded of streams over the course of 150 years (below, closeup of City of Portland), where flatter areas were developed for Eastside residential, and margins on the Willamette filled in for industrial development.

You can also get a close-up view,including the central business district – seen in closeup below.  Notice the existing pattern, where streams are kept somewhat intact in the west hillsides (topography being somewhat of an antidote to piping), then quickly buried when they reach the urbanized area.  Tanner Creek, one of the hidden streams we will be studying closer, is captured as it originates from the Oregon Zoo and cuts through the northwest corner of downtown.

A relatively simple map that is more evocative than accurate, but does much to reinforce the ideology of what is hidden beneath our developed urban areas.  As I mentioned, it has stuck with me (and I’m glad Metro still has these available).  One of the stronger and original inspirations for the project, it continues to entertain and inspire investigation into our hidden hydrology.

Category : community, environmental, hidden hydrology, history, images, mapping, portland, publications, research, theory, thoughts, urbanism, water
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19th Jan2011

Hidden Hydrology Origins 2: David James Duncan

by Jason King

Another inspiration for the Hidden Hydrology of Portland is the writing of David James Duncan (author of a couple of my favorite books, the Brothers K amongst the best).  In a book of essays from 2002 entitled ‘My Story as Told by Water‘ Duncan tells some stories with a Portland area spin about his youthful explorations in the area.  The idea of oral histories providing an additional layer to mapping and other on-the-ground study is intriguing, as the narrative is both informative and evocative of what these lost urban waterways meant, and what was lost along with them.

image via Wikipedia

Early in his childhood,  he mentions growing up on Mount Tabor (the volcanic outgrowth in East Portland – not the biblical version, seen above between downtown and Mt. Hood in the image), and his quote worth discussing hints at the disconnect between the modern city and the natural processes which shape and feed these places:

“My birth-cone’s slopes were drained by tiny seasonal streams, which, like most of the creeks in that industrialized quadrant of Portland, were buried in underground pipes long before I arrived on the scene. … I was born, then, without a watershed.  On a planet held together by gravity and fed by rain, a planet whose every creature depends on water and whose every slope works full-time, for eternity, to create creeks and rivers.  I was born with neither.  The creeks of my birth-cone were invisible, the river from somewhere else entirely.”  (p.4)

The water system from early in Portland’s history, was stored at high points like Mount Tabor and piped to surrounding neighborhoods.  This shot from 1912 shows one of the reservoirs that are still in operation today (for how long, is a good question).

image via Vintage Portland

The artificiality of the watershed is evident in Duncan’s discussions, as he makes do with building creeks using the hose and the power of gravity (much to his mothers chagrin) – using with water delivered to reservoirs and coming to his tap, as is common in many cities, from distant locales while burying the remnant hydrology that exists.  A map of the water system shows the existing Bull Run watershed in relation to Portland.

Continuing this discussion on Johnson Creek on a youthful visit, showing the degradation of some of the existing waterways that has been occurring for many years.  “It was just one of Portland’s dying creeks.  Really, one with a much-needed but long-lost Indian name.  Johnson Creek was now its anemic title.  But it was twenty-six miles long, hence a little too big to bury.” (p.10)

image via OregonLive

It’s heartening to see the restoration of the creek, which is one of the few to remain on the east side in some natural form, through the work of a number of local groups such as the Johnson Creek Watershed Council, and recently there were reports of dead coho salmon found 15 miles upstream – which is significant as it is the furthest upstream anyone has noticed these species in many years, and a testament to the work on restoration and improvement.   Something Duncan would appreciate, no doubt.

image via OregonLive

While water and rivers was of importance to Duncan, the main driving force for him was fishing – which drove the explorations to the wilds of the city.  After leaving Mount Tabor, the family moved further east towards Gresham, and lived for a time on Osborne Road, the future route of I-205.  Duncan mentions the lure of possible fishing holes, but the inaccessibility:   “A spring a quarter-mile from our new house flowed into a series of backyard trout ponds for neighbors, but these ponds were picture-windowed, guard-dogged, private.  The closest fish-inhabited waters to my house, so far as I knew, were the Columbia, three miles due north.”  (p.17)

The story continues around the small town of Fairview, under Halsey Street, where Duncan spotted a kid and discovered a hidden world amidst the underbrush:  “…the shocking thing, the magical thing, was that he was standing knee-deep in clear, lively creek water.  A creek surrounded on all sides by briars so dense I’d never noticed it before.”  (p.17)   Later in the same spot, he saw  a guy catching a trout there “a secret trout stream” and found his new exploration spot, as mentioned “Fairview Creek, it turned out, was five miles long, two-thirds wild, and amazingly full of life.” (p.18)  See the location on the far right edge as it interfaces with the Columbia Slough watershed.

Following the course, he found gravel pits headwater at Mud Lake that were stocked rainbow trout, near the Kennel Club, a pond with bullheads, and always adventure in the streams. “In the plunge-pool below the Banfield Freeway culvert, I caught a thirteen-inch Giant Pacific Salamader that stared straight into my eyes, flaring and hissing like something out of Dante Volume one, till I apologized, cut my line and released it.”

The approximate area is interesting to see and compare – although the historical imagery from Google Earth (which is awesome btw) only goes back to 1990, there’s a telling transformation in a twenty year time-span (although still a fair amount of stream left intact with development.  I remember this area, as my mother used to live just North of the Salish Ponds park (south of Halsey) and we took the trails through behind the Target and over into Fairview, which is a real gem and one of those places that, like Duncan, you may walk by many times without realizing it’s there.  I’ve highlighted Fairview Creek in Blue.

The same area in 1990 where you can see the residential development along Fairview Creek

The denouement to this story of youthful exploration comes after a few years of fishing these urban creeks and streams:

“At six-thirty or so on a rainy April morning, I crept up to a favorite hole, threaded a worm on a hook, prepared to case – then noticed something impossible: there was no water in the creek. …I 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 opposte 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 creek’s entire flow had been diverted for months in order to fill two gigantic new settling ponds.  My favorite teacher was dead.”   (p.22)

A case of disappeared streams, captured in a moment of time from someone that was there.  The sadness in this loss is palpable, as it isn’t just a line on a map, but a leaving & breathing part of someone – both their history and their essence.  This sort of study of writings offers many opportunities for exploration through history, and can reveal much about a place in the past.  Combined with oral histories from residents and other qualitative study, it offers a dimension that maps just can’t on their own.  Thus looking beyond the map to the history is vital and inspirational going forward.

(all page references are to:  Duncan, David James. My Story as Told by Water.  Sierra Club Books, 2002.)

Category : environmental, hidden hydrology, history, images, mapping, portland, research, thoughts, urbanism, water, wetlands, writing
1 Comm
22nd Dec2010

REWIND: 2010, A Year in Review

by Jason King

What a great year.  Ok, while not a complete year (the firm began operations in mid-February), 2010 was a great start to TERRA.fluxus, with a number of highlights, projects, research, and exploration worthy of a recap.  Rather than a chronological walk through the year, there are a number of themes to be captured within the projects and activities of the firm, which ranged through the west from Washington & Oregon to California, and included a wide variety of explorations of planning, design, and urbanism.  Starting in the home office, I first moved to a shared space with Design Department, then finally to the current location at Tenpod, another  shared office space inside the Rocket Building on East Burnside, centrally located and packed with a range of creative folks.  The changes of scenery have been great, and the people I’ve met, make me feel fortunate to live and practice in Portland.

Starting a business is hard. This fact is not made easier by a tepid economic climate, but I felt I had the opportunity to grow and expand the nature of my experience and the potential for landscape architecture.  So I did so , because I thought I had something to offer clients and the community.  My business model is simple – do innovative client-based work in a range of areas, balanced with equal time for research and speculation of new ideas.  The ability to take on work that is meaningful, challenging, and vital is rare.  The opportunity to do it for a living is a gift.  So, in year number one, I must give thanks to my clients and collaborators, both old and new, who trusted me with their projects, ideas, sites, budgets, and visions.  I wholeheartedly appreciate it, and hope to continue to provide services in the upcoming year.

Green Above Ground

The work in the realm of Veg.itecture was front and center for TERRA.fluxus in 2010, including over 40,000 s.f. of projects designed and/or installed in 2010, augmenting the total ecoroof square footage i’ve worked on over the years to well over three acres.  Always trying to push the envelope for understanding vegetated roofing, I also compiled some new research related to the specific requirements of ecoroof irrigation in the Portland region in a presentation for an on-going group that I helped to co-found, the Green Roof info Think-tank, or GRiT, for short.  In addition, I published a DIY Guide to small scale ecoroofs, and also helped lead the Ecoroofs 2010 Tour as part of the annual ecoroof Vendor showcase that highlights the great companies in the industry throughout the region.

Built work included a number of great OHSU Projects including the Child Development Research Center (CDRC) which was constructed this year, and the Hatfield Research Center (HRC) and the main Hospital C-Wing projects that will be installed in early 2011.  Other projects include the ongoing development BPA 905 Building project, working with the GSA to provide stimulus-funded improvements to multiple roofs on this headquarters building in the Lloyd District.  This project will also happen in 2011.

A major highlight was winning the RFP and the award of the contract from Bureau of Environmental Services for the Ecoroof Design-Build Contract for the Green Above Ground Collaborative, along with wonderful partners Snyder Roofing, Teufel Landscape, Verde, and Cascade Design Professionals.  Our goal of 30,000 square feet of green roof, along with tours, education, a proposed video and mobilization of emerging, women, and minority-owned businesses will provide a ton of excitement through the next two years, expanding on our collective experience in the industry.   This award was also mentioned in local media publications such as the AGC Oregon newsletter and the DJC Oregon.

Media coverage was also thick for the arrival of Ty Pennington and the crew from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, where the Green Above Ground crew participated in the fast-paced design of the vegetated roof for the Oregon Center for the Deaf in Salem.  It was wonderful to be involved in this great project that benefited so many, while giving green roofs some visible media coverage on a national forum.  A different small scale roof terrace for the Reliable Apartments went as well.  Outside of the region, I finished up Van Ness MOB (my first project in San Francisco) which will be built in 2011, and locally, got to see the completion of a few older projects done prior to starting TERRA.fluxus, such as the First+Main Building in downtown.

Visualizing Vegitecture

An adjunct to the built work around Green Above Ground, there are visuals to sell future projects.  Many of these were done, working with Tremco, for projects in California,  including the Wilshire-Rodeo roof terrace in Los Angeles, which re-envisioned a drab commercial rooftop into a lively outdoor meeting space.  Another LA project was for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where views from patient rooms overlooked a gray gravel roof, which also led to significant heat gain in the building.  Moving to Oakland, there was also the Washington Medical Center which combined green walls and roofs to provide aesthetically-pleasing (and sustainable) views from patient roofs instead of drab rooftops and mechanical equipment.

This concept expanded on an idea I believed strongly in, that of biophilic design, which engages our connection to nature and natural materials and processes in the creation of healthy and restorative spaces.   While green roofs are great for a number of reasons, the connection to building occupants through visible engagement with nature is one with a special power in hospital settings, where these can aid in many health outcomes.  These visuals aid in convincing decision-makers of the beauty and utility of these concepts.

Urban Agriculture & Food

Continuing the theme of rooftops, this time mixed with food, I had the opportunity to again be involved in the planning, design, and installation of the Multnomah County Hope Garden, a rooftop urban agricultural showcase that provides food for local hunger-relief agencies.  This project, in its second year, donates over 500 pounds of locally-grown produce, cared for by the County’s Green Team, in just a small  200 s.f. area on their rooftop.   The work in urban agriculture led to some great networking, capture here in a great blurb on the ASLA Sustainable Sites PPN blog, which discussed my presentation up at University of Washington on urban agriculture ‘Designing for Urban Food‘ – where I shared the stage with great minds like Deb Guenther from Mithun, Keith McPeters’ from GGN, and Jeffrey Hou from UW.

I also meet some great folks teaching at UW, like Brandon Born and Thaisa Way whom have offered additional opportunities for learning and interaction.  While my time on the Food Policy Council came and went, there were some other exciting projects like the community based remediation of the Emerson Street Garden – a brownfield site turned community gardening, and the site planning for the WVMC Hospital Garden in McMinnville, planned to help feed patients fresh produce at the hospital.

Another highlight was the opportunity to show off the Chicken Cube, our ecoroof topped coop design-build project on this years Tour de Coops, an annual tour of innovative chicken homes put on by local non-profit group Growing Gardens.  The tour had over 300 people, and the coop even garnered some TV time with a short spot on the local show Garden Time – which was a blast – a good use of my fifteen minutes of fame.  On the subject of coops, I also had a great opportunity to be guest juror for an internal coop-design competition sponsored by SERA Architects, as part of a fundraiser for local arts group PICA.

In addition to chickens, the food cart phenomenon was in full gear, and one of my first commisions came working on design for a food cart pod on a derelict brownfield site in Southeast Portland for one of my favorite clients, Urban Development Partners.  This forward thinking developer took a vacant parcel which will eventually be built-out, and constructed this pop-up site, opening in July with a few pioneers.  The site has quickly filled up with over 15 carts, expanding to include covered areas and heaters for all-weather dining.  This planning and design experience also included a quote in the recently released book Cartopia, authored by friends and colleagues Kelley Roy and Kelly Rodgers, which is literally flying off the shelves since it’s October debut.

Ecology & Site Remediation

An ongoing project is the Bradford Street Property where I am conducting multi-year evaluation of remediation plantings done on this waterfront site along the Willamette River in North Portland.  There is also a remediation component for the Emerson Street Garden and 2011 offers opportunities for more specific technical aspects of phytoremediation as this aspect of the lead-contaminated site begins in earnest.  Another ecologically notable project that has also continued is the work around the wetland area for the Asante Court Park in Medford, Oregon.  This multi-phase project, working with uber client Asante Health System, began with wetland mitigation plantings, this year followed with the installation of the new park area plantings to provide more sustainable design than lawn and non-native plantings.  New phases include continue this theme with additional common area plantings and the addition of the stormwater outfall garden, which are in final design and approval process, to be installed in Spring of 2011.

A great article showed up in Multi-Family News focused on sustainable landscaping, where I was able to drop some ideas on ecoroofs, efficient irrigation, appropriate plant selection, and ecological stormwater design.  These principles were also embedded in our proposal for the Min Zidell Garden at the National College of Natural Medicine, which unfortunately we did not get – but the experience working with the team and the great folks at NCNM was truly wonderful, and I’m sure the results will be fantastic.   Another small project includes LEED evaluation for Creekside Clinic in Medford, (operated by Asante).

This site-scale work continued with development of native plantings and LEED evaluation for the Reliable Apartments in Southeast Portland, and will continue into 2011 with some Metro-funded sustainable site improvements to the Move-the-House Apartments on 38th and Division.  The proposed work, in addition to flow-through planters and permeable pavement, will include a vertical wetland sculpture, habitat nodes throughout the site, a vertical green wall, and canopy ecoroofs.

The Urban Laboratory

The beginnings of the year continued the on-going activities related to the Oregon Solutions process for Community Gardening, along with the seminar class at University of Oregon investigating the ‘Urban Edge‘ of Portland.  Both of these projects were specifically representative of using the Portland region as a working laboratory for study.  In that vein, the work on Landscape+Urbanism also continued, with more focus on local issues and ideas as I study my home place in new and exciting ways.  The writing led to a great connection and interview with colleague Christian Barnhard for his great new podcast series LANDCAST.

Work also continues on the PDX Greenmap, to provide a resource for locating information on a range of sustainable resource throughout the Portland metro region.  Also, the next iteration of the urban laboratory to continue into the next year will be recently unveiled Hidden Hydrology Project – which will provide a more robust information gathering, analysis, mapping, and exploration of a range of topics concerning urbanism, water, and the definition of our place.

Community Building

Per my business model, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a number of community-based activities and projects around the region.  There are educational items like the  tour of sustainable sites in downtown for the World Affairs Council of Oregon as well as more expansive tours and workshops such as the great  Oregon Sustainability Experience that brings folks from out of town to learn from Portland about sustainability and urban agriculture.  I was also honored to be a juror for the BEST awards, which awards local businesses pushing the boundaries of sustainability.  Pro-bono work included the design for the Extreme Makeover Ecoroof, the Hope Garden Rooftop Agriculture, and the Willamette Valley Medical Center garden project.

Other projects include the afforementioned Emerson Street Garden included a series of workshops and alternatives that were developed over six months, culminating in the final design concept and groundbreaking in mid-summer.   My involvement in the garden sprang from the connections made during the Oregon Solutions Gardening project – which included representatives from the amazing Groundwork Portland – who have plans for many brownfileld sites throughout Portland.  A community-oriented proposal for the Seattle-based ideas competition Holding Patterns garnered an honorable mention from the judges as well, liking our take on the Urban Voids Matrix, a notion of ‘A Modular Approach to Building the Sustainable City’ that looks at the three typologies of the site, hole, and frame within a matrix of food, community, ecology, and materials.  This award-winning project offers potential for vacant properties not just in Seattle, but also in Portland, which will be explored further in the next year.

Check out the specific links for more information and references for this projects.

I, for one, can’t wait for 2011… it’s gonna be another great year.

Category : agriculture, biophilic design, brownfields, business, community, competitions, ecoroofs, environmental, food, graphics, heathcare, images, installations, landscape, living walls, los angeles, mapping, medford, mitigation, permitting, planning, planting, portland, press, projects, publications, research, REWIND, roof gardens, san francisco, seattle, subnatures, sustainability, teaching, theory, tours, ugb, urban voids, urbanism, vegitecture, water, wetlands
1 Comm
21st Dec2010

Hidden Hydrology – Portland Series Introduction

by Jason King

In the next year, TERRA.fluxus will be initiating a multi-phase project to explore the Hidden Hydrology of the city of Portland as the main research activity for the near future.   I have been fascinated with this since my first glimpse of the Disappeared Streams map published by Metro (will get my hands on one soon and give a glimpse) and it’s eventual configuration into a 2006 ASLA Presentation on ‘Neighborsheds for Stormwater Management‘ as an preliminary exploration of the concept.  The particular Metro map highlighted ‘historic’ streams that had been buried and piped through development of the City of Portland over the course of the last 150 plus years, showing existing as blue and those ‘disappeared’ in red.  While many westside creeks still ran free, the entire eastside was vivid red, long covered by roads, industrial buildings, houses, parks, and more.   While the methodology on that particular map was suspect (relying more on topographic analysis than hydrological markers), there are plenty of sources for historic waterways in maps, photos, and on-site investigation.

Thus the focus of the project, utilizing multiple sources to gain a more complete understanding of the underlying hydrological history of the area, with an aim towards using this information both in traditional planning and design manners, but also as the touchstone for a series of speculative works.

Portland, of course, has always been, and still is, a river city.   We live around waterways and bridge lifts, and relying on water for our recreation and port traffic, as well as giving us the overall image of our city.  Tucked along the banks of the Willamette and its confluence with the Columbia,  the history of water mirrors the history of urbanization, from the initial settlement patterns and grids of the 1850s up to modern conditions.  The early, or ‘pre-development’ snapshot is best captured in this compilation map of the 1852 Cadastral Survey, which was created right after the incorporation of Portland as a city in 1851.  This map, and others (a great collection of which can be found at the Bureau of Environmental Services site), will play parts in analysis throughout the project.

You can spend hours looking at this map, and placing the vision of this early city compared to it’s eventual form.  While Portland’s rivers and streams are beautiful – they are also highly troubled, with dual issues of industrial pollution and combined sewer overflows working in tandem to create issues for native fish (and people), landing many of our major waterways on lists of the most polluted rivers.  The idea of hidden hydrology is evident not in the still visible (although they are intimately connected), but those ‘urban’ waterways that over the years have changed from open streams and creeks to become piped as ‘infrastructure systems’ to deal with expanding growth of the metropolis.   Thus we look at the slow erasure of natural topography and hydrology at work in a political sphere, and begin to see what remains of this palimpsest.

The most urban example is found in Tanner Creek, the historic downtown river that wound through downtown for over fifty years, remaining intact (in form if not in quality) through urbanization, as seen in this 1881 illustration looking at downtown towards the northeast.

The proximity of this creek to development (and the Tannery) led to pollution and sanitation issues downstream, so as with many urban creeks, a period of modernization happened, in this case the 1917 implementation of the Tanner Creek Sewer project.  This forever buried the main stem of this historic creek through the heart of downtown in brick vault sewer (many of which are still functioning, or have recently been replaced).


:: images via Bureau of Environmental Services

While the historic are interesting in their own right (and there are ample sources of material to digest so more to come on this), the interaction of the new and old is both dynamic and informative.  Moving to the Southeast Quadrant, we can isolate the more detailed Cadastral maps (the survey developed the township, section geometry used today, thus giving us the ability to overlay old and new with a measure of precision).  The coverage through the 1850s and 60s is quite extensive, and will be useful when reconciled with the existing GIS coordinate systems.  An inverted version of the original survey maps gives an indication of their density of information.  The study area will be in the upper right hand quadrant of this township scale map.

A series of maps utilize GIS layering along with historical mapping underlayment to create a modern ‘routing’ for a stream in the lower Taggart basin.  First a section of the historical map (1852) was analyzed for hydrologic features (river, stream, wetland, etc.) based on the map features present at the time of the survey.  These are accented to show their location for referencing to other maps.

The topography and street grid are overlaid to show the relationship of water features to current configurations.  The addition of hillshade allows for fine-tuning of hydrological features to match remnant topographic that has not been leveled or erased through development.

Following this, the combined ‘hybrid’ map is reconciled into a workable base that is accurate to the historical location of ‘urban streams’ as well as current urban form.  Additional layers are added, and the iterations of analyses are only limited by time and usefulness.  Groundwater, soils, historical aerial photos, vacant lands, floodplains, and vegetative cover are just a few that spring to mind from glancing at Metro’s stock of layers.   I am also already other gathering data for a planned comparison with BES Subwatersheds, which mirror directly the configuration of subsurface pipe infrastructure that replaced these open channels sometime in the last 100+ years.  While our technology allows us to perform feats unbelievable to the 19th century Portander in lifting, pumping, and moving materials, there is still an inherent consistency and efficiency of using gravity to move water and waste that still makes these historic systems relevant as blueprints for existing conditions.

The other idea is to use this information for potential projects and interventions – looking opportunistically at the relationship of these systems over time and space.   To kick of this aspect, the next phase of analysis for this area will also be to ‘ground-truth’ the map hybrids – through a series of documented urban explorations (in the spirit of the Center for Land Use Interpretation perhaps?), along with further refinement, historical research, and analysis throughout 2011.

Stay tuned for more info after the new year.

Category : announcements, community, graphics, history, images, mapping, planning, portland, projects, research, subnatures, urbanism, water, wetlands
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