Urban Transparency
2. Invisible Infrastructure Our natural water systems are far more pervasive and complex than initially meets the eye. Over time, our waterways lost their primacy as channels of transportation, commerce and orientation. Urbanization re-organized around rail and road networks. Rivers, streams, and watersheds receded as interdependent regional and continental networks. Cities paved over streams and riverbeds, neglected their environmental health and ignored downstream consequences. This hydrological diagram of the USA shows every river and stream.
Waterways are re-centered in this counterpoint to our streetbased mapping paradigm, rendered as capillary-like vessels sustaining a body of land with an interconnectedness that surpasses political boundaries. Urban waterfronts offer us a chance to re-engage with the bigger picture again, to better understand our roles in addressing climate change and environmental issues. They are also sites of conflict, where we confront the precarious relationship between urbanization and the natural world. Our man-made rivers, in the form of water management systems, are mostly invisible.
They include monumental feats of engineering, as in DC Water’s 2.4-mile, twenty-three-foot diameter Anacostia River Tunnel, snaking its way under and along the Anacostia River at a depth of eighty to one hundred-twenty feet below the surface. Since its completion in 2018 as part of the Clean Rivers Project, the tunnel has diverted more than 90 percent of combined sewer overflow into the river, mostly during extreme rain events. To reduce strain on tunnel capacity, 498 acres of land managed by green infrastructures reduce stormwater runoff and pollution at the source- inland support for a healthier waterfront hidden in plain sight.
Above: DC Water Tunnel Boring
Avenues, Volume 3
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