Category: creeks

Hidden Hydrology + Climate Solutions

Jason Kingart, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, equity, history, infrastructure, maps, research, streamsLeave a Comment on Hidden Hydrology + Climate Solutions

My first Substack publication, The Climate Landscape, explored various themes related to our changing climate and landscape architecture to examine nature-based solutions to climate change impacts. I recently decided to shelve that particular project and focus exclusively on writing about hidden hydrology; however, a few of those early essays were worth retaining here as they showed good overlap and connections between the two topics.

There is a direct connection between our cities’ buried and lost rivers and climate change. I touched on climate here in a recent “Lost Rivers for Underground Energy” and have written about it often on my older Hidden Hydrology site. It took me some time to make a direct connection between my research on climate and lost waterways until more recently, and the revelation allowed me to weave together these two passions.

I’ve continued connecting the dots and trying to build a case for the importance of historical ecology and hidden hydrology in being the locus for solutions to contemporary issues, and not just focused on nostalgia. One aspect of this is looking first at causes and effects — looking back at the erasure of waterways from cities and demonstrating that the loss of ecological and hydrological systems exacerbates climate impacts such as urban heat, flooding, and sea level rise. I also looked forward to showing the patterns of historical hydrological systems that can act as frameworks for innovative climate solutions to provide adaptation and mitigation opportunities. The idea of “hydrological retro-futures” is the term I chose for this backward-forward process, which allows us to connect the historical ecology to the modern metropolis and tell these stories in an engaging, visual format.

One aspect of this project is visual. By using various graphical generative AI resources like DALL-E (see image below), I have been creating speculative images of hidden hydrology in the urban context, and exploring ways that revealing, restoring, and reconnecting with lost rivers can help us imagine the potential visual impacts that could be gained. I will share more in-depth on this project and some of the interesting graphics in a later post.

Hydrologic Retrofutures: Portland Series 1 (Generated in DALL-E via prompts Jason King)

The other aspect is research and case-study-based. Brainstorming a few key topics areas, I will continue to explore here, including:

  • MICROCLIMATE COOLINGThe daylighted streams will restore ecosystem services lost when buried, such as the presence of cooling surface water and vegetation that can aid in mitigating urban heat islands.
  • FLOOD STORAGE CAPACITYDaylighting streams and springs currently in pipes will increase the capacity of infrastructure systems and make them more effective for flood resilience.
  • SEA LEVEL RISEAreas of made-land in cities as a proxy for areas of flooding due to SLR and storm surge and ways to adapt these to absorb with more resilience
  • WATER HARVESTING TO SUPPORT URBAN BIODIVERSITYDiversion of water that would be piped into uses for support of landscape vegetation and urban greening
  • WATER USE FOR COOLING ENVIRONMENTSTapping into water from subsurface water pipes to help cool cities – use in pools, water features, misters, etc.
  • WATER FOR HEATING & COOLING BUILDINGSUsing water from buried sewer pipes for heating buildings
  • PALEO VALLEYSLooking at hidden ancient river valleys as sources for groundwater recharge and storage as new aquifers

By exploring these topics, I aim to gather feedback and generate a complete toolkit of solutions that can provide designers, planners, and policy-makers with options that work in multiple climates and scales and provide cascading benefits when implemented. I’d be interested to know of other topics and solution areas out there beyond this list, as well as any case studies, writings, or research on these topics.

Below are a handful of previous stories that cover some of these topics.

ANCIENT WATERWAYS FOR COOLING CITIES

A recent article in Fast Company outlines the idea of “How ancient waterways could be tapped to cool scorching cities”. The focus is on new scanning methods to reveal buried streams and ‘ancient waterways’ and how to see the hidden infrastructure and potentially repurpose the water for climate change adaptation strategies. The group leading this effort is Cool City, an offshoot of the Korean Pavilion as part of the 2021 Venice Biennale, with projects using mapping underway in both Naples and Seoul. The unique idea here is to use handheld 3D scanning technology to provide more detailed scans of systems and then to use the gathered data to inform decisions for climate.

3D scanning of “Casa dell’Acqua” Municipality of Volla (via Cool City)

I’ve covered this topic in some detail at Hidden Hydrology. There’s merit to this as a way of approaching climate change through the use of these buried systems, both as a resource for water for irrigation and a passive cooling system and as a way to increase pipe capacity by removing underground streams through daylighting which frees up vital volume for additional stormwater management.

Mapping these has been done for many years, either as a GIS exercise with overlays of historical maps on current conditions and subsequent field verification or looking at current sewer and water and combined systems. This provides a good working system network to understand this hidden potential but not forgotten water in the city. Still, Cool City is taking it to the next level, as mentioned in the article, quoting a project collaborator, Nick De Pace, a professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design:

“Buried streams and old waterways are not totally lost to time. Many cities have maps showing where a former creek has been shunted into an underground tunnel to make way for aboveground urban development, for example. But De Pace says many of these maps are imprecise, and the new digital scanning and mapping of the Cool City project can bring much more actionable detail to buried streams, aqueducts, and springs. By using this water to irrigate green roofs, parks, and other urban vegetation, cities can counterbalance their heat-trapping hardscapes.”

A low-resolution snapshot of the scan below shows how compelling this composite imagery may be, showing the spaces above and below. Does it aid in climate planning, maybe? They mention that it can be used for irrigation, for more green spaces to mitigate urban heat islands, and for having more water on the surface to reduce heat and provide more cooling. Additionally, the mix of green and blue infrastructure systems can tap into the buried water to help adapt to climate change impacts.

Composite scan of subsurface conditions (via Fast Company)

I wonder, however, how feasible it will be to scan much of the sub-surface infrastructure as proposed above by Cool City, as it’s a mixed bag of small and large pipes and some more expansive and cavernous sewers, depending on the location and the era in which they were implemented. It’s a question to me if it is helpful to have 3D versions of these systems, or is mapping or modeling adequate to see the potential system components and flows and determine how it can be ‘tapped’ to become a tool to fight climate change?

3D scanning is an excellent visualization tool, as it is often difficult to imagine what lies beneath, which is less compelling than a line on a map. As mentioned in the article, understanding the available water resources more clearly is half the battle. The next part is how to operationalize this water for climate strategies. I am interested in seeing more from Cool City, how the technology works, and what solutions come up for using hidden hydrology for climate solutions.

DETROIT: BURIED BUT NOT DEAD

Connecting the dots of Hidden Hydrology and Climate Change, a recent article makes the link between buried streams and wetlands and flood risk while investigating the inequitable distribution of risk by overlaying redlining map data. A recent article focused on Detroit dives into this connection. (“Buried but not dead: The impact of stream and wetland loss on flood risk in redlined neighborhoods” by Jacob Napieralski, Atreyi Guin, and Catherine Sulich; City and Environment Interactions, January 2024.)

While tying flooding to historically buried waterways isn’t novel, this is a unique idea, using mapping to overlay the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps showing redlining categories, which are well-documented spatial histories of racial and socioeconomic discrimination. The researchers used these factors (buried streams and redlining grade) as two of the criteria for flood risk along with proximity to coastal zones and intensity of vegetative cover.

Redlining Map of Detroit Metro Area (via Article)

The article is a deep dive, so I will skim on the surface with a bit on the methodology and findings, which are engaging and would be replicable anywhere using similar criteria. The mapping processes, including mapping and DEMs, were interesting. The inference of buried water bodies and flood risk has been borne out in recent events. The authors explain the connections between mapping and current flood risk:

“Although the actual stream channel or wetland surface were buried and built upon, high resolution elevation models (e.g., LiDAR) can be used to reveal the remnants of distinct depressions from these structures, such as meandering stream valleys, in heavily urbanized landscapes. The authors assume that, although no longer occupied by active streams or wetlands, residential homes built on buried stream valleys will experience an elevated probability of flood risk not included in floodplain maps, but also that the process of burial and removal were influenced by income and race embedded in some of the racist housing policies of the 1930s and 1940s.”

Figure from article: “An example of a river in Southwest Detroit identified by the first United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic map from 1905 (top left), the existing buried stream valley, as evidence from LiDAR data from 2020 (elevation units in feet above sea level), that is capped with residential development (top right), and the intense First Street Foundation Flood Factor risk of parcels near the ghost river (bottom).”

The flood risk data came from First Street Foundation’s Flood Factor, which would be good to explore in more detail. As described, the flood risk of parcels is rated 1 to 10 based on the chance of flooding in a time interval. There were also additional criteria, as mentioned, with coastal proximity, using available data, and vegetation density using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to describe the level of vegetation—more on both of these in the article, along with all the analyses.

A figure from the article showing flood risks by type of area “associated with inland, coastal zone, ghost streams, and ghost wetlands within redlined neighborhoods.”

The results reinforce other narratives of disproportionate risk tied to redlining districts that had more marginalized populations. The level of parcels at risk in zones C and D from the HOLC maps, although the amount of burial varied with the presence of most buried streams in HOLC Grade A & B and more buried wetlands in HOLC Grades C & D. As the authors mention:

“Flood risk is disproportionately distributed, caused in part by outlawed, racist housing policies. Understanding where risk is highest can help identify optimum locations for adaptation measures to minimize flood damage in these neighborhoods.”

This does bring up why mapping these streams is important, and the connections to climate change, although not overt, are implied as changes in precipitation and storm intensity make flood risks more frequent and more damaging. As the authors conclude (with a nice reference to hidden hydrology (citation please), the “…role of redlining in present day flood risk applies to cities throughout the United States, as does the importance of mapping ghost streams and wetlands to inform residents of the role “hidden hydrology” may play in increasing flood risk.”

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SAVING SWAMPS TO SAVE OURSELVES

It was a treat to read one of my favorite authors, Annie Proulx (Swamps can protect against climate change if we only let them, New Yorker – 06.27.22), discussing wetlands and their potential for climate change protection. She includes tales of killer herons, stolen rafts, and evocative ideas on our complex relationship with swamps, noting that “Many modern Americans do not like swamps, herons or no herons, and experience discomfort, irritation, bewilderment, and frustration when coaxed or forced into one…”

Illustration by Carson Ellis (via New Yorker)

Swamps were not always reviled or out of favor, as Proulx recounts, in particular the views of Henry David Thoreau, on the subject:

“Thoreau has been called the patron saint of swamps, because in them he found the deepest kind of beauty and interest. He wrote of his fondness for swamps throughout his life, most feelingly in his essay “Walking”: “Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp.”

The connection to hidden hydrology lies in the massive loss of wetlands and the subsequent loss of function to reduce carbon and the numerous ecosystem services beyond that are provided by wetlands in filtering and mediating water in our landscapes. Development in the US meant filling wetlands for farmland, pasture, and eventually cities. The swamps often were a barrier to progress and Proulx notes:

“Across the country, the ongoing stories of vile adventures in the muck made it clear to military, government, and citizenry that something had to be done about the swamps so universally detested. Everywhere there were horrendous mixtures of fen, bog, swamp, river, pond, lake, and human frustration. This was a country of rich, absorbent wetlands that increasingly no one wanted.”

As this occurred, there were impacts, but climate change, and sea level rise in particular, exacerbates flooding, and filled-in wetlands at the margins are poor habitats for the buildings or fields we placed on them that are now in danger of being washed away with more intense storms. There were impacts to landscapes and plantings that reduced habitat. Beyond biodiversity loss, humans will feel the overall loss of resilience more acutely. Still, it is hard to save or restore these landscapes, as Proulx notes in her story of the Black Swamp.

“One authority on water, William Mitsch, has suggested that if ten per cent of the old Black Swamp soils were allowed to become wetlands again they would cleanse the runoff, yet Ohioans remain powerfully anti-wetland. Even private efforts to restore small wetland areas are met with neighbors’ complaints about noisy frogs and fears of flooding.”

Related are mangroves, which are also summarily destroyed, taking with them the ability to reduce storm surges and protect coastal areas in places like the Everglades. As described: “Mangrove swamps have been called the earth’s most important ecosystem, because they form a bristling wall that stabilizes the land’s edge and protects shorelines from hurricanes and erosion, and because they are breeding grounds and protective nurseries for thousands of species, including barracuda, tarpon, snook, crabs, shrimp, and shellfish. They take the full brunt of most storms and hurricanes, and generally survive—but not always.”

Larger, more intense hurricanes can damage mangrove areas with salt or sediment intrusion, reducing their ability to regenerate and removing their support for biodiversity. While natural disasters are a risk, development still threatens these areas despite mounting evidence of their benefits.

“Although climate researchers see mangrove swamps as crucially important frontline defenses against rising seawater and as superior absorbers of CO2—they are five times more efficient than tropical forests—they are in big trouble, and mangrove removal is a constant threat.”

The conclusion for Proulx is to re-establish our love of the swamp, and connect the existential threat of climate change to our ways of life to the natural systems we destroy in the process. Protecting what is there in terms of wetlands and mangroves left standing is the first goal, as well as restoring and expanding these valuable ecosystems, all of which are possible, even necessary as adaptation and mitigation strategies. Proulx ends with a call to action we can all heed:

“It is usual to think of the vast wetland losses as a tragedy, with hopeless conviction that the past cannot be retrieved. Tragic, indeed, and part of our climate-change anguish. But as we learn how valuable wetlands are in softening the shocks of the changing climate, and how eagerly the natural world responds to concerned care, perhaps we can shift the weight of wetland destruction from inevitable to “not on my watch.” Can we become Thoreauvian enough to see wetlands as desirable landscapes that protect the earth while refreshing our joy in existence? For conservationists the world over, finding this joy is central to having a life well lived.”

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 12/17/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

Daylighting Tibbetts Brook

Jason Kingart, case study, city, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, ecology, equity, history, infrastructure, maps, new york, places, projects, research, streamsLeave a Comment on Daylighting Tibbetts Brook

The recent essay, “Daylighting a Brook in the Bronx” (Pioneer Works, 10.23.24), by Emily Raboteau, focuses on a high-profile stream daylighting project from a resident’s 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 Brook’s 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:

“Daylighting will abate combined sewage overflow, extend greenspace, absorb heat, and relieve chronic flooding in our area’s janky, archaic drainage system, in an act of climate mitigation and as a community effort to solve a mess caused by old crimes.”

I’m 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 ‘cleaning up’ 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:

“I had so many ethical questions without easy answers. It felt uncouth to ask them of a dream thirty years in the making…. 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 brook’s 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 “perfect” 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 “Rescuing Tibbets Brook” 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 “the sonic geography of the buried Tibbetts Brook.”

Van Cortlandt Park South Bridge (via Noel Hefele)

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:

“I appreciate how initiatives like these offer an expansive response to catastrophe, a way to gather, and even a sense of hope. It’s 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.”

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 “perfect” 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:

“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.”

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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 ‘drainer’ 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, “NYC: Watercourses to Undercity” (Hidden Hydrology, 12.28.17).

Tibbetts Brook, photo by Steve Duncan (via National Geographic)

Tibbetts Brook was the subject of the article “Why New York Is Unearthing a Brook It Buried a Century Ago” (NY Times, 12.6.21), which discusses the project goals and objectives in detail. “The city plans to unearth the brook — an engineering feat known as “daylighting” — at a cost of more than $130 million, because burying it in the sewer system has worsened the city’s flooding problems as a warming planet experiences more frequent and intense storms.”

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 ‘spongy’ green infrastructure, hardening critical infrastructure, and methods to “unclog drains and widen pipes.” I’ve written about Eric Sanderson’s work of historical ecology and mapping hidden waterways in his Mannahatta and the broader Welikia Projects. He writes a powerful post-Ida opinion piece, “Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go” (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.

“Water 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 — expressed through tax dollars — to help people move to safer places.”

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 — which was alluded to by Raboteau — 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:

“Though 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.”

To learn more about this concept, I wrote on “Captured Streams” (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.

Water Kinship

Jason Kingart, creeks, cultural, ecology, explorations, habitat, landscape, language, literature, oregon, places, rivers, sensesLeave a Comment on Water Kinship

The article “Reaching the Light of Day” (Orion, May 23, 2024) is compelling if you’re interested in hidden hydrology. Author Corinne Segal recounts some of the larger themes and projects around “ghost streams,” 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 ‘kinship’ 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:

kin·ship /ˈkinˌSHip/, noun. blood relationship; a sharing of characteristics or origins.

One could make a case for both parts of this definition. While we’re 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 ‘blood relationship’ 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 ‘kin’ impacting our bodies in negative ways with disease. It is a kinship of reciprocity, reflecting a link between our treatment of our ‘kin’ 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 ‘sharing of characteristics or origins’ 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 “syntax” to develop understanding and attain wisdom.

An excerpt from his elaborates on this idea:

“I think when you’re 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 it’s the syntax that you really are after. Anybody can develop the vocabulary. It’s the relationships that are important. And it’s the discerning of this three-dimensional set of relationships that awakens you to how complex this is at any one moment.”

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: “The 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.”

This connection with water, as Lopez describes it, requires spending time physically interacting with these environments, and conducting actual visits with our ‘kin’ to deepen ties. The wrinkle here is how we adapt this approach for the ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’, 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.

Holy Spring in Istanbul – via Orion Magazine

I’m reminded of one of the origin stories of Hidden Hydrology, with author David James Duncan recounting a tale in his fabulous book “My Story As Told By Water”, of the death of one of his favorite fishing spots in his stomping grounds east of Portland:

“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 cast – 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 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 creek’s entire flow had been diverted for months in order to fill two gigantic new settling ponds.  My favorite teacher was dead.”

It is sometimes challenging to think of hidden hydrology through the lens of grief, but you can feel Duncan’s pain at the loss of this urban creek. It’s one cut in the death of a thousand cuts that makes up the global tragedy — 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 don’t 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.

Baltimore Ghost Rivers – via Orion Magazine

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. “Back from the dead” 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, “Robin Wall Kimmerer on the Language of Animacy” hints at this idea:

If it’s just stuff, we can treat it any way that that we want. But if it’s family, if it’s beings, if they’re other persons we have ecological compassion for them… Speaking with the grammar of animacy brings us all into this circle of moral consideration. Whereas when we say “it,” we set those beings, those “things,” as they say, outside of our circle of moral responsibility.”

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 ‘kinship’. 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.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on how we can develop and expand these relationships, our ‘kinship’, 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.

Vancouver Rainways

Jason Kingart, city, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, ecology, habitat, history, infrastructure, landscape, maps, parks, places, precipitation, streams, vancouver, watershedsLeave a Comment on Vancouver Rainways

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 ‘green’ solutions over ‘grey’, 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. “How Rainways Could Restore ‘Raincouver’” (The Tyee, August 24, 2023) highlights some of the recent work in Vancouver. What they refer to as ‘Rainways’ 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.

St George Rainway Street Mural (St George Rainway Project)

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.

Visualization of Rainway along 12th Avenue to Broadway (St. George Rainway)

Rain City Strategy

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 aren’t just solving one problem but many.

Rain City Vancouver (City of Vancouver)

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 ‘Vancouver’s Old Streams’, published in 1978 with a sweet hand-drawn version of the map below (read more about this in my 2016 post “Vancouver’s Secret Waterways”).

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.

Concept Design – St. George Rainway (City of Vancouver)

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

It’s 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 “Neighborsheds for Green Infrastructure”, where I made a case for using the routing of buried streams as a framework to implement green infrastructure solutions in Portland, Oregon. I’ll 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 “Ecological Inspirations” 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.

The Lost Suburbs of Los Angeles

Jason Kingarchaeology, case study, city, creeks, cultural, ecology, habitat, history, infrastructure, landscape, los angeles, maps, research, streams, watershedsLeave a Comment on The Lost Suburbs of Los Angeles

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 ‘lost suburbs’ 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 “lost suburbs”, 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-Gabrieleño 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: “We 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.” 

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 — but our people are still here… now, the challenge is to restore the environment, and rebuild our nations.”

The project is part of a larger Los Angeles Landscape History project, with a report published in 2023 outlining the details of this analysis of the Indigenous Landscape of the city. A key component of the analysis is mentioned in the Executive Summary:

“Descriptions 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.”

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:

“This project is unique because a commonly shared, detailed map of the historical ecology—the flora, fauna, hydrology, and landforms, that evolved within Southern California’s 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.”

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.

Historical Water Features 1896-1903 (LALAH Story Map)
Historical Water Features 1924-1941 (LALAH Story Map)

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 “…vegetation 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.”

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. There’s 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.

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/01/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

Ghost Rivers of Baltimore

Jason Kingart, baltimore, case study, city, creeks, cultural, design, explorations, maps, places, streamsLeave a Comment on Ghost Rivers of Baltimore

One of the cooler examples of hidden hydrology art in the past year is “Ghost Rivers”, the brainchild of designer and artist Bruce Willen of studio Public Mechanics.

Ghost Rivers (Ghost Rivers)

Envisioned as a “…public art project & walking tour, rediscovering hidden streams and histories that run beneath our feet.” Willen uses traffic striping and signage to highlight multiple sites around the city, particularly Sumwalt Run, a buried creek that “now flows entirely through underground culverts beneath the Remington and Charles Village neighborhoods.”

The site includes some great background, including the history of the streams and their burial, along with some great illustrations of the path as it winds through

Stream burial (Baltimore DPW Archives, Ronald Parks – Ghost Rivers)
Sumwalt Run pipe (Ghost Rivers)

The installation itself is simple, using durable thermoplastic traffic striping in a wavy pattern that allows the line to engage with people in multiple ways and follow curbs and walks – so it is interrupting the linear flow patterns of walkers, cyclists, and driver throughout the city. This allows the eye and the curiosity to wander along these paths and connect the dots.

Images of the meandering blue path in the public realm (Ghost Rivers)

Self-guided walking tours are available and will expand as more sites are included, along with a Google map to track the route and key points. The signs are also simple, but bright and noticeable for those passersby, allowing for a bit of interactivity as they line up with the views of the meanders, and provide some background information and QR codes to scan for more engagement.

Ghost Rivers Sign (Colossal)

The summary statement explains the idea of connecting us with these hidden creeks.

“Below the streets of Baltimore flow dozens of lost streams. These ghost rivers still cascade from their sources, the many natural springs around the city. As the street grid sprawled outward from the harbor, these verdant waterways were buried in concrete tunnels. They now run deep beneath our rowhomes, channeled into the city’s storm sewers, hidden and mostly forgotten. You can sometimes hear their rushing waters echoing up from storm drains.”

The site also includes awesome resources for more information, history, daylighting resources, and other artistic interventions worthy of a follow-up, including a few I’ve posted about in the past and a few new ones. This is a model that is highly replicable in almost any city, using materials that are simple and evocative in unique ways to highlight those subterranean stories and make us reconsider our relationships with the hidden hydrology.

Closeup of Sumwalt Run marker (Ghost Rivers)

The idea is one of the most cohesive and elegant takes on the idea of revealing creeks using blue lines tracking the historical routing of the waterways. It draws upon precedents, mentioned by applying traffic coating, markers, or paint to mark the route of creeks, most similarly artist Sean Derry’s work in Indianapolis ‘Charting Pogue’s Run” and Henk Hostra’s “The Blue Road” in Drachten, The Netherlands, the proposed “Ghost Arroyos” in San Francisco. Another art-based example from Baltimore is the “Green Alley” street painting, and more loose, ephemeral versions in the St. George Rainway in Vancouver, B.C., in São Paulo, Brazil as part of the Rios a Ruas project, Stacy Levy’s Stream Sketches in New York City.

There are lots of examples of this type of project, and it is interesting to see the different ways a simple blue line can be used to engage in revealing historical layers. So let me know if you have other favorites you’ve seen.

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 04/29/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

Exploring Canada’s Buried Rivers

Jason Kingcreeks, daylighting, history, maps, montreal, places, streams, toronto, vancouverLeave a Comment on Exploring Canada’s Buried Rivers

A recent CBC News interactive “Buried rivers flow under Canadian cities, hidden in a labyrinth of tunnels and sewer pipes. Will we revive them or let the waterways fade from memory?” (April 3, 2024) provides a deep dive and great graphics and maps for hidden hydrology in three cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Jaela Benstien and Emily Chung do a great job of highlighting both the timeline of urban stream disappearance and some of the ways the streams are coming back to life.

The narrative of disappearance mirrors many other cities, including pollution and diseases like cholera and typhoid turning waterways from amenities to dangers. Encasement in pipes became a way to remove the sources from contact and also opened up future land for development.

Images of sewer construction in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre River in the 1930s (Archives de la Ville de Montréal – via CBC)

The article explores particular creeks in Toronto including Mud Creek, where Helen Mills, founder of Lost Rivers, gives a tour of the remnants and traces of the urban waterway. It also discusses Taddle Creek which provides one of those dramatic before-and-after visuals we all dream of when envisioning the hidden hydrology in the modern context.

Taddle Creek near Toronto University, in 1861 (uc.utoronto.ca/public domain/CBC)
The same view in 2023 (Emily Chung/CBC)

The methods we used to show lost rivers are worth more exploration here, and the news interactive does a great job of using a scrolling format and some oblique aerial maps of the three cities, such as Toronto below.

Image of Toronto’s Lost Rivers (CBC)

The interactive aspect allows for more context for places, such as the route of Mud Creek through the Evergreen Brick Works, using a revealing overlay w/ aerial imagery with powerful effect.

Overlay of Mud Creek in the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto (CBC)

The story similarly looks at both Montreal and Vancouver in-depth, so check out the full exploration. For some added context, I previously covered some of the Canadian cities in some depth with Vancouver’s Secret Waterways (November 2016) and Toronto’s Lost Rivers (July 2017), and also a more in-depth discussion of the great documentary Lost Rivers (November 2016).

There’s a focus on daylighting, and they include Luna Khirfan, a professor of planning at the University of Waterloo who has done extensive research on stream daylighting projects around the globe. She mentions other cities around the world that are doing work on daylighting and restoration of urban creeks, such as Zurich, Switzerland, Seoul, South Korea, Berkeley, California, and Yonkers, New York, which we will cover in more depth in the future posts.

The imagery emphasizes the constrained conditions of some of the waterways that were not buried and still exist in daylight, but have been channelized at the margins of. This image of Still Creek in Vancouver highlights the conditions of many creeks.

Still Creek in Vancouver, BC (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Even in a constrained condition, there are benefits to the visible creeks, in terms of cooling, habitat, and biophilic connections to water and nature. The story also makes the key connection between these lost rivers and contemporary climate change issues like flooding and urban heat islands. As noted:

“Climate change and urbanization are heating and flooding our cities. Restoring buried waterways — and their riverbanks — could be one answer to many problems: cooling heat islands, absorbing carbon dioxide, cleaning the air, reducing flooding and providing a habitat for wildlife and native plants.”

The story is engaging and informative, and more cities deserve that deep dive into the history and potential for exploration of hidden hydrology and potential daylighting and restoration. I also do appreciate the link to my Hidden Hydrology site for more info!

As a companion piece to the news interactive, the CBC podcast What on Earth with Laura Lynch from April 14, 2024 “Buried under cities, rivers are a climate wonder in waiting” a 30-minute exploration by Jaela Bernstien (who co-authored the previous story), and Lynch of some of these same topics in audio format, in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre, Toronto’s Mud Creek and Vancouver’s Still Creek. Through discussions with Kregg Hetherington, Amir Taleghani, and Helen Mills, it captures the beauty of hidden hydrology exploration and discovery and highlights the goals of ecosystem restoration and climate change solutions embedded in restoring lost rivers. Luna Khirfan is also part of the dialogue, discussing her work at the University of Waterloo around stream daylighting, the challenges of daylighting, and other world global cities like Zurich that have championed the idea.

Give both the article a read and the podcast a listen and let me know what you think.

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 04/20/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.

Tokyo Drift

Jason Kingart, case study, creeks, cultural, explorations, history, language, maps, places, streamsLeave a Comment on Tokyo Drift

The article “Tracing Tokyo’s Hidden Rivers” (The Japan Times, March 2024) was a fascinating dive into hidden hydrology mapping and urban exploration through the lens of Japanese culture and added a new term to my lexicon. The concept of ankyo, 暗渠. which at a basic level translates in English to something akin to “culvert”, “conduit” or “subterranean drain”. These features have been removed from the city’s original landscape, yet still reveal themselves in numerous ways. This is the starting point for Hideo Takayama and Nama Yoshimura, who together started “Ankyo Maniacs”, a group focused on exploring these urban remnants of buried and hidden streams in the City of Tokyo.

Tours of the ankyo reveal waterways flowing under manholes (The Japan Times)

The explorers rely on what they call “ankyo signs”, which include a wide range of markers that help clue us into the hidden hydrology, including place names, objects, and drains (such as shown above) which allow the visual and auditory connections to flowing water. There are also urban remnants such as barriers and old bridges that were previously in place to protect from open waterways but were never removed, or prevent access to areas that have been covered over. More obvious are places focusing on water, including baths, pools, and fishing ponds. The Ankyo Maniacs and others have refocused attention on these liminal spaces, as mentioned in the article:

“While they may be out of our sight, Takayama says water still flows through many ankyo, while others have become part of local drainage systems. “It’s as if they’re telling us, ‘We’re still here,’” he says. “By getting to know them, we can appreciate the past dignity of these rivers.”

The basis for the exploration relies on several maps and the history of Tokyo spans many years. The Tokyo Ankyo Sanpo (Tokyo Ankyo Stroll) map, edited by So Honda, provides the go-to for locals exploring the city with ankyo and other features mapped in detail. Another more modern resource is the Tokyo Jisou, or Time Layer Maps, available as an iPhone and iPad app, which is a map viewer that shows maps of the city at different periods, spanning the Meiji to Heisei Eras from the 1800s to present time.

Images from the Tokyo Jisou Maps – by the Japan Map Center (App Store)

Beyond the specifics of mapping and exploration, the language of hidden hydrology is also fascinating, the Japanese term “ankyo” providing a case study of the hidden poetry of the terms. At a basic level, ankyo describes these places in practical terms, as drains and culverts that work to convey water underground. When you look at the underlying meaning of the characters, it hints at ideas like ‘darkness, shade, disappearance’ which allude to the more mysterious nature of the network of underground features that compel us to explore. The Tokyo Ankyo Sanpo map mentioned previously also includes the opposite features “kaikyo” 海峡, which are the still-visible open channels, evoking lighter ideas like ‘cheerful, pleasant, and agreeable’.

An example of one of the tours is found on the Experience Suginami Tokyo site, providing self-guided instructions in the area of Ogikubo Station following the route of the former Momozonogawa River and portions of the Zenpukujigawa River, including “ankyo signs” such as alleys and paths that act as covers to the buried streams, curving walkways mimicking the previous channels, and other hints at the hidden histories underneath.

Ankyo (Culvert) Tour map near Ogikubo station (Experience Suginami Tokyo)

The heart of the process isn’t just about the learning or processing of information, but about the experience. The prompt by the explorers: “Don’t Think. Walk and Feel!” is imbued with ideas about slow time, and the benefits of connecting to places more deliberately. It also connects to larger ideas about experiencing places, observing and connecting to the signs and features of the urban landscape, expressed in the Japanese concept of ‘wabi-sabi’, allowing appreciation of nature, along the way.

The language barrier does limit my full understanding of the content, (including what seems like some great publications) so if any Japanese speakers have more to add, I would love to hear it. For some bonus content, this short video with Takayama and Yoshimura in Tokyo outlines their work exploring the ankyo.

The idea of revealing the locations of hidden places is compelling for all who study hidden hydrology in its many forms. As summed up in the video: “Ankyo hunters say they enjoy the idea that at any moment you could be standing over a piece of forgotten Tokyo.”

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 04/18/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/18/25.

Restoring Swede Hollow

Jason Kingcase study, city, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, history, infrastructure, places, projects, watersheds1 Comment on Restoring Swede Hollow

An interesting project in St. Paul, Minnesota emerged in this Star Tribune article “Work could begin soon to bring St. Paul’s Phalen Creek back to the surface,” which highlights the mix of ecological and cultural benefits of urban stream daylighting. Through a focus on both the benefits to wildlife habitat and ecosystem function and the connection of cultural heritage for native people and early immigrants to the area, it shows a rich story that is told through multiple lenses to provide solid rationale for daylighting projects.

One major idea of daylighting is visibility. As mentioned in the Star Tribune article, this is a typical case of burial of creeks for development, but like many other areas, the perceptions have shifted and the value of historical waterways are being restored. A big part of that is pointed out by Ramsey-Washington Metro district watershed project manager Paige Ahlborg, watershed project: “Another benefit is just restoring a community’s connection to the water,” Ahlborg said. “Seeing it makes it harder to do things that harm it. We still have a number of people who think that ‘if I put something down the [storm]sewer drain, it will be treated.'”

The history of places is expressed in place names. From the Capitol Region Watershed District site, some history on the current name: “Swede Hollow on the City of Saint Paul’s East Side is a historic immigrant neighborhood dating back to the 19th century. This lowland valley includes a portion of a stream from Phalen Creek to the Mississippi River. After housing was removed following the turn of the century, the city created Swede Hollow Park and placed some of the stream flow in a storm sewer pipe to complete its path to the river.”

Image of Phalen Creek burial in the 1920s. – via Minnesota Historical Society

As is the case with most places, the story and names is often told in European terms (i.e. Swede Hollow). The creek name as well comes from Edward Phalen, one of Saint Paul’s original colonists, who settled on the banks of the creek in 1838. Prior to this arrival, the history of place stretched far earlier as referenced in the Lower Phalen Creek Project, a native-led project:

“This creek served as a corridor for the Dakota people who lived here, as they made their way up the chain of lakes by canoe to White Bear Lake – one of many areas where they gathered wild rice.”

The daylighting has both ecological and cultural benefits. In the Star Tribune, Lower Phalen Creek Project Executive Direction Maggie Lorenz, who is both Dakota and Ojibwe, mentions: “[Phalen Creek] is an essential part of the community — it will bring more natural habitat and it means more opportunities for recreation and stormwater management. And, from a cultural perspective, we are really interested in restoring the land and taking care of the land according to our traditional teachings.”

While the goal is to extend daylighting all the way to the Mississippi River, one the first legs connects from Lake Phalen and Maryland Avenue as shown in this enlarged plan, highlighting the ecological benefits, including fish passage and enhanced in-stream habitat, establishment not just of the creek but adjacent floodplain wetlands to provide resilience and habitat for amphibians, and upland prairies that provide native riparian habitat supporting birds and pollinators.

“Consultants at Inter-Fluve, Inc. produced this visual to represent the proposed location, general design elements, and predicted habitat benefits of a restored stream channel of Phalen Creek at the Lake Phalen / Maryland Avenue project site.” via Lower Phalen Creek Project

A ton of additional information is at the LPCP site, including graphic summary of the project is found in a brochure that connects the dots between the cultural and ecological.

Brochure for Daylighting Phalen Creek – via Lower Phalen Creek Project – click here for full size PDF

Header Image: “Rendering of a daylighted creek provided by Capitol Region Watershed District.” via Lower Phalen Creek Project

Landscape and Memory

Jason Kingarchaeology, art, city, creeks, daylighting, design, history, maps, new york, projects, streams1 Comment on Landscape and Memory

A project from artist Cristina Iglesias (see a post of some of her previous work here) again dives into the idea of hidden hydrology, this time in New York City. Entitled Landscape and Memory (referencing the title of one of my favorite books by Simon Schama), the work unearths a buried stream in Madison Square Park.

From The Architect’s Newspaper: “Manhattan is crisscrossed by streams and rivers that have since been buried but continue to flow, flooding their banks and the basements above when it rains. For Landscape and Memory, Iglesias will exhume an impression of Cedar Creek, which once flowed beneath where the park now stands today.”

From the Madison Square Park Conservancy, some more info: “Nodding to historian Simon Schama’s major 1995 volume of the same name, which surveyed the history of landscape across time and terrain, Landscape and Memory is informed by Iglesias’ research into the history of the site. For the project, Iglesias located and studied antique maps that documented the water flow beneath Madison Square Park, where the Cedar Creek and Minetta Brook once coursed for two miles before flowing into the Hudson River. With nineteenth-century industrialization, streams like the Cedar and Minetta were buried underground to create additional land for building sites, underground drains, or sewers. Through Landscape and Memory, Iglesias renders this buried history visible again, inviting viewers to contemplate centuries of transformation of urban sites that were once natural.”

Excited to hear more about this and see more images, as the sketch is a bit… sketchy. You can check out the full press release here for more info. Based on some of her previous work it will be wonderful in execution. The work will be installed from May 23, 2022, through December 4, 2022 so those in New York City go check it out and report back.