So it turns out that Guanajuato used to have a river running right through the middle of downtown but when it was settled it was put into culverts in various places. When the area had a larger rainy season than usual, the city would often flood, the water taking homes, buildings and streets with it. The flood of 1905 was so great, much of the city had to be rebuilt and, like Seattle after the fire, Guanajuatoans(sp?) rebuilt on top of the old city raising it's level and building tunnels for car traffic that manage much of the city's motor vehicles. Signs are posted all over the historic district(see below) showing the level the flood reached. Emily and I have both become fascinated with the idea of the subterranean river and have decided to do our studio on finding ways of conceptually daylighting the river since it is infeasible to actually daylight it, due to the depth of the riverbed. My history credit will also have to do with the river; I'll be making a brochure/walking tour of the river's course with points of interest, stories etc... and a short stop-motion(i hope) movie about the flood itself.
This entry is to ask your help a bit. Do any of you have any precedents, projects, articles that might aid us in our site analysis or give us some conceptual jumping off points? We'd love to hear from you. Hope you aren't drowning in work already. Also--MLA crew, any ideas from looking at the flooding in New Orleans?
4 comments:
There's always Rome, with its famous flooding of the Tiber and various flood control strategies that have been put into place over time. The Fontana della Barca is a monument to the water levels of a flood that happened in the 1600s(?) and many of the fountains in the city are still fed by aqueducts from the mountains. So there are some revelatory strategies you can borrow there. I may have some photos of flood markers but I would have to look around.
More recently, take a look at Nine Mile Run for a more naturalistic strategy.
Jocelyn
I can't say the N.O., at least what we saw, provides any insights.
The canals were somewhat stagnant and mosquitos loved 'em. Parts were covered with what basically looked like a 60' wide grass lined swale. They do not want anything but grass because roots, maintenance, etc.
I think we saw some slides in Jeff's class where they daylighted a portion of a creek/river in Japan. It seemed more amenity rather than functional.
check out open2100.org look under resources, perhaps the water streets typology could help.
looking forward to seeing you two soon!
DM
Of course you've probably thought of it, but Ravenna Creek right here in Seattle is a good example of trying to raise awareness of an underground creek that can't be daylighted. There might be some examples in Portland - Tanner Springs? Of course there must be hundreds of examples of urban creeks/rivers that are underground all over the world... are you mainly looking for ones that have been interpreted? There's a major river through La Paz, Bolivia, mostly underground, but I don't know if it has flooded or been interpreted.
As far as NOLA (common abbrev. for New Orleans), they seem to have the opposite issue - all the rivers are HIGHER than the land (so they have to constantly pump out a lot of water to keep it dry).
Don't know if this will help - let us know about what you come up with, I'm quite curious!
The thought of burying or daylighting a "river" raises questions I have never really thought about before because most buried or daylighted urban "streams"
(or at least the ones I am aware of) are small, high gradient, "transport reaches" with little sediment storage and thus little if anything in terms of a developed floodplain.
Daylighting a "river" large enough to have significant sediment storage and floodplain development would seem to create challeges orders of magnitude greater than smaller streams.
It would be interesting to have a sense of scale... how big is this river in terms of annual discharge, and peak flow? What is the size and quality of its sediment load? How has the river up and downstream responding to being buried? No need to answer for my sake but these questions might be interesting to explore in your analysis and story.
But yes... let's see... your request for help. Compared to Seattle, Portland has little experience with stream daylighting... and mostly with small headwater streams. Portland Parks has done some very small scale stuff...
http://www.fws.gov/oregonfwo/ToolsForLandowners/UrbanConservation/Documents/MultnomahCty/MultnoAprilHill.pdf
The first real significant daylighting project was the controversial and exciting Headwaters development in Tryon Creek Watershed...
http://www.buildernewsmag.com/viewnews.pl?id=566
You might check out a report by Richard Pinkham that the Rocky Mountain Institute published in 2000 entitled Daylighting: New Life for Buried Streams. If I recall it profiled numerous daylighting case studies.... You might be able to find it on their website.
Go wild!
Jim
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