Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice and City Planning and Design

Abstract

Injustices occur when human law and social practice ignore natural processes and when those who plan, design and build the city focus on a neighbourhood's problems and fail to recognize its resources. The story of the Mill Creek neighbourhood in Philadelphia illustrates these themes. Mill Creek is shaped by all the processes at work in inner-city America. It was laid waste by the flow of water and capital, and by the violence of redevelopment and neglect. Known locally as ‘The Bottom’, Mill Creek is one of many such ‘Black Bottoms’ in the US. They are at the bottom, economically, socially and topographically. Here, harsh socio-economic conditions and racial discrimination are exacerbated by health and safety hazards posed by a high water table and unstable ground. Landscape literacy is a means for recognizing and redressing those injustices through urban planning and design and community development, just as verbal literacy was a cornerstone of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Keywords:

• Landscape history
• environmental education
• community development
• watershed management
• urban design and planning

Acknowledgements

Many debts are incurred during a project of such a long duration. A list of sponsors and participants apppears on the West Philadelphia Landscape Project website (http://web.mit.edu/wplp). The initial support of the J.N. Pew Charitable Trust from 1987 to 1991 made possible the foundation from which all later activities grew. Without the support of the Center for Community Parnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, the work with Sulzberger Middle School would not have been possible; support ranged from the provision of vans to ferry my students back and forth to seed grants for curriculum development to support for research assistants. To learn more about the Center, whose leadership in promoting academically-based community service has received international recognition, see http://www.upenn.edu/ccp. I am grateful to Kenneth Olwig for editorial suggestions and would also like to acknowledge Cynthia Ott, who assembled a rich archive of historical material, first as a student, then as a research assistant.

Notes

The racial composition of a neighbourhood was one of several criteria used for assessment. For an excellent discussion of research on redlining, both historical and current, see Hillier (2003).

English dictionaries define landscape as static and “natural”: “a picture representing a view of natural scenery (as fields, hills, forests, water) … a portion of land that the eye can comprehend in a single view” (Merriam-Webster, 2003). But landscape is not a mere visible surface, static composition, or passive backdrop to human theatre. Landscape associates a place with all who dwell there, past and present. Danish landskab, German landschaft and Old English landscipe combine two roots. ‘Land’ means both a place and the people living there (earth, country, nation). Skabe and schaffen mean “to shape”; suffixes -skab and -schaft, as in the English ‘-ship’, also mean association, partnership. Still strong in Scandinavian and German languages, these original meanings have all but disappeared from English. See Spirn (1998) for a longer discussion.

A ballfield was recently built here, so the meadow and grove are no more.

These articles were collected and compiled by Heather Hillman (Hillman, 1997).

This is a vernacular term explained to me by Frances Walker, a resident of Mill Creek.

Population of Hispanic origin was less than 1% in 1990.

In addition to built projects, there are five reports. Models of Success: Landscape Improvements and Community Development describes examples of successful projects that have already been built and draws lessons for similar projects that could be undertaken in West Philadelphia (Spirn & Marcucci, 1991). This Garden is a Town explores community gardens as models for neighbourhood-based planning (Spirn & Pollio, 1990). Shaping the Block focuses on the block as a significant unit of neighbourhood and explores how residents can reshape the block they live on to better support their needs (Spirn & Cameron, 1991). Vacant Urban Land: A Resource for Reshaping Urban Neighborhoods describes the diverse types of vacant urban land that occur in West Philadelphia and how they can be reclaimed for a variety of uses (Spirn & Pollio, 1991). The West Philadelphia Digital Database: An Atlas and Guide is an introduction to the digital database (Spirn & Cheetham, 1996).

Many of these can be seen on the web pages for my studio class Transforming the Urban Landscape in 1996, 1997 and 1998 (http://web.mit.edu/wplp/course).

Examples of maps and other information from the digital database are online at http://web.mit.edu/wplp/wpdd/wpddhome.htm.

http://web.mit.edu/wplp. To see the original website, click on the link to Old Penn WPLP. The website was redesigned by my MIT students in 2002; to see their version, go to New MIT WPLP.

One goal was to inspire students to enter high school with their sights set on a college education and with the confidence that this ambition was achievable.

The students in spring 1997 spent the first six weeks of the 14-week semester preparing for their visits to the Sulzberger classroom. Each student researched one period in the neighbourhood's history from pre-colonial times to the present, found primary sources, and used secondary texts to put the history of the neighbourhood into the context of region and nation.

The texts and drawings of this report, Power of Place: Essays about Our Mill Creek Neighborhood, are on the WPLP website, as are the reflections of Sulzberger teacher Glenn Campbell.

Those enrolled were typically undergraduates and graduate students. Initially, the students in the class were Caucasian or Thai; in later years, the ethnic and racial diversity broadened to include Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American students.

Martin Knox, one of the research assistants who led the summer programme in 1997, spoke in 2002 with my MIT students. His reflections are online at http://web.mit.edu/4.243j/www/wplp/s-knox.html

SMS News is online in the Sulzberger (SMS) part of the WPLP website at http://web.mit.edu/wplp/sms/smsnews/smsnew.htm

More information about and illustrations of the Mill Creek Project are available online at http://web.mit.edu/wplp/sms/millc.htm

Some of these are described online at http://web.mit.edu/wplp/sms/award.htm

A description of these activities appears on the WPLP website at http://web.mit.edu/wplp/project/mccoal.htm and http://web.mit.edu/4.243j/www/wplp/s-cornitcher.html

Joe Piotrowski, Associate Director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Water Division, Region 3, describes the Environmental Protection Agency's role in the project at http://web.mit.edu/4.243j/www/wplp/s-piotrowski.html

My former research assistant, Sarah Williams, and Joanne Dahme, Watersheds Programs Manager at the Philadelphia Water Department, describe their experiences with this programme at http://web.mit.edu/4.243j/www/wplp/stories.html

Reportedly, the final straw was when the corporation placed in charge of Sulzberger decided to partly dismantle Sulzberger's computer lab in order to distribute equipment to other schools that did not have as many computers.