Pando Microcosms

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Pando Microcosms

Puste, Marcus

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10429/2553

Date: 2024-04-30

Abstract:

Detroit’s image is atrophied due to its flooding and remains at greater risk than any city around the Great Lakes Basin. Numerous studies have indicated that the city’s future resilience calls for a future ecology, intended as the alliance with and implementation of nature embedded into future development. Ecological resiliency reflects characteristics similar to assessed resilience as put forth by various thinkers and theorists, such as C.S. Holling, Barbara B. Wilson, Brian Walker, David Salt, Victor Delaqua, and K.H. Liao, who advocated for non-traditional methods and decentralized collective responses to adapt and absorb yearly shock. Nature is the paragon of these decentralized qualities and the long-term environmental panacea; it is the scenario in which cities must work symbiotically with nature’s forces rather than deterring or controlling its outcomes. How can Detroit be envisioned as a city that utilizes and collaborates with nature, and what aspects of nature can be mimicked into its future infrastructure? This study explores factors in Detroit contributing to flooding and proposes a vision of how the city may evolve if nature-based solutions are employed within the next century. Mapping the flood trajectory over time, Detroit can be seen as submerged by the next century. These representations urge a re-envisioned and interconnected landscape to achieve flood resilience. Upon documenting city-induced challenges that contribute to inundation, experimental design interventions were conducted to test alternative processes of implementing water and nature within daily programs—infrastructural flaws within the status quo call for drastic and visionary city planning. The success of future ecological design is predetermined through holistic and systematic approaches requiring more than traditional urban planning or landscape processes; Detroit’s flood resiliency requires interconnectedness.

Description:

Detroit is most prone to inundation within the Great Lakes region. As a result, its neighborhoods continue to suffer from significant amounts of flooding and vacancies. Although rain-induced floods are understood and experienced by many to some extent, few are aware of the undervalued and neglected neighborhoods suffering inundation extremities. Many factors contribute to flooding, including increased rainfall, impervious surfaces, and the city’s aging and combined stormwater infrastructure. The focus of this investigation revolves around questions of ecological resiliency through which blue and green methodologies can redefine the city’s flood response. Resilience theories drive the motive and inspiration for this investigation. A new interpretation emerges through the literature of Barbara B. Wilson (in her book Resilience for All), Brian Walker, C.S. Hollings, and others. Resiliency is understood as a dynamic, ever-growing system with a decentralized ability to face adverse events through a dynamic collective response. Ecological resilience moreover emphasizes growth and adaptation (Carpenter 2002). These beliefs can apply to flood-prone areas utilizing interventions with identical resilient characteristics. For instance, green (soft) systems (e.g., vegetation, gardens, etc.) are defined as a universal tactic that solves catastrophic demands and improves the quality of life through “natural-driven strategies” (Parker 2023): systems that can depend and thrive upon one another. In contrast, grey (hard) systems are man-driven and human-dominated (e.g., structured or non-structured strategies, including policies, rezoning, etc.) (Sohn et al. 2021). Detroit has planted methods to control and prevent flooding; however, none have prevailed. Resiliency is considered through the act of adaptation as opposed to resistance. As a result, the “grey” status quo mentality is challenged to collaborate with nature in contrast to its deterrence. Landscape designer Dafni Filippa emphasizes this mutual characteristic relevant in biourbanism design: “…the relationship and metabolism between urban and natural systems and how we can design for that to address climate change & sociopolitical emergencies” (Morillas 2024). Upon deconstructing the meaning of resiliency, this study seeked to address Detroit’s flooding crisis utilizing protopian urban planning, regenerative design, and biourbanist implementations. Such interventions aim to provide a new vision for the built environment and ecological resilience. What does a nature-mimesis Detroit look like in the next century? What nature-inspired adaptations can address causes of flooding? This study investigated how effective green strategies can be envisioned in Detroit’s urban grid, infrastructure, vacancies, and waterfronts to mitigate flooding in its adjacencies. As a result, design approaches are proposed for Jefferson Chalmers as a framework for other Detroit neighborhoods and cities across the Great Lakes Basin. Proposed strategies respect the community’s voice and unique connections to its canals—priorities that were otherwise disregarded from prior failed proposals and attempts, including the city and Army Corp’s failure to permanently close the canals prevented by the residents (Mondry 2022). Proposals must instead promote neighborhood context and a self-sustained city. Findings indicate that the city must escape its infrastructural status quo to pursue a re-envisioned and interconnected Detroit landscape that is in tune with nature and achieves flood resiliency. The significance of this study also lies in its ability to raise awareness for ecological flooding resilience, to envision a nature-based Detroit for the 21st century, and to propose design interventions within Jefferson Chalmers as a framework for communities encouraging soft (green) over hard (grey) strategies. The objectives of inclusivity and sustainability call for approaches that encourage future cities to collaborate with the forces of nature rather than attempting to deter it. Throughout the process, the neighborhood’s historic canals are preserved while utilizing Detroit’s synergized vacancies and green infrastructure to offset flooding. This research demonstrated alternative concepts and tests to encourage long-term innovation for future cities and inundation design. Designing for a submerged Detroit by 2200, the thesis advocates for alternative strategies that revoke present-day developments. As a result, proposals must additionally address city-induced flooding challenges aside from ecological rain increase. Since riverfront neighborhoods are most susceptible to river flooding, coastline development must act as the primary buffer with extreme permeability. Residential zones contribute the most to pluvial flooding and must be re-envisioned differently with regards to infrastructure and urban grids. Resiliency, sustainability, and green design inform a contextual and visionary approach, advancing community and infrastructural concerns into future designed interventions. Methodologies involve mixed and quantitative mediums, including observations, literature, mapping, recorded community engagement feedback, interviews with community leaders and nonprofits, diagramming, and experimental interventions. These studies revealed Detroit to be more susceptible to inundation than initially anticipated, with residential areas contributing and affected the most from flood accumulation. Flooding is additionally a city-induced challenge and not only an ecological one, submerging Detroit by 2200. Although these investigations pursue an infrastructure entirely dependent on green methodologies or green infrastructure, grey infrastructure still presents effective, short-term alternatives. Structural-engineered implementations, along with their non-structural policy characteristics, are posed as the provider for greener methodologies to occur and be maintained, to begin with (Sohn et al. 2021). Designing for future contexts always presents itself as a limitation vis-à-vis credibility. The unknown still exists with unforeseen variables pertaining to flood, economy, and infrastructural trajectories. Although design proposals consider all variables within their context, the experimental interventions are conducted abstractly to comprehend and track a particular category of flooding within Detroit. Green-inspired interventions are similarly associated with resiliency’s attributes denoting scattered adaptations and collective networks. One can argue that nature itself is founded upon these same principles and has been summoning the city dwellers’ attention for centuries through natural catastrophes. Its voice has been silenced by humankind developments that undertake otherwise through human-dominated infrastructure. Detroit will be submerged by the next century. The city must escape its infrastructural status quo to pursue a re-envisioned and interconnected Detroit landscape that is in tune with nature and achieves flood resiliency. Proposals and methodologies are aimed towards the designers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Successful design is a holistic approach requiring more than an urban planning or landscape design approach. Detroit’s flood resiliency requires interconnectedness.

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