In LA 140 this semester we read Anne Spirn’s Restoring Mill Creek. I’ve continued to think about this article because it relates to a lot of what we’ve talked about this semester.
Spirn talks about a landscape literacy, pushing past the physical appearance of a place and learning how to read the underlying processes that make up a landscape. She says: “to read this landscape is to understand that nothing stays the same [and] permits the reader to see what is not immediate […] to read the landscape is also to anticipate the possible, to envision, choose, and shape the future.” (400) A lack of landscape literacy means that problems are not effectively addressed and the context isn’t fully grasped. This leads to faulty solutions, because they’re based in an incomplete understanding.
I think this rings true both for socio-historical processes of an area as well its physical armatures. In Marin City, for example, it was important to understand the history of the site, the social context of this community within Marin County. That’s one element of literacy that we needed to learn when we started the project. Being able to meet with Ms. Terrie was so valuable for learning about the community, its desires for the proposed park, and how the community felt about their city. Any proposal that did not integrate or understand these elements would be incomplete and inappropriate for the space.
At the same time, we also learn about the physical landscape, the armatures that define the space and the flows that shape it. In Marin City, water has a huge influence on the space — especially the groundwater. On a daily basis the tidal variations show how low lying the Sausalito side of the freeway is and it’s easy to imagine how a storm surge would impact the community. This is all pretty hard to understand and visualize from a computer though, there’s nothing like going in person and seeing it.
In our most recent studio project, I thought about this article again when I saw the map of Historical Baylands in Richmond. It was so eye opening to realize that Point Richmond used to be an island, and essentially the entire site that Brandon and I were working on in the low-lying areas of Richmond had been tidal marsh and tidal flats. This historical armature of the site is extremely important for developing literacy of this landscape, because it directly influences things like liquefaction and earthquake risk in these areas. It’s all fill!
For myself, I think I often get stuck in the research phase about a new place, because I want to know as much as possible about it before trying to propose something. Could I be missing some huge piece to reading the place? In terms of literacy, I think it probably takes years to develop a true understanding of a place — and even that might not be possible without being part of the community living there.
Spirn, A. (2005). Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice and City Planning and Design. Landscape Research 30(3). 395–413.
