{"id":3953,"date":"2011-09-20T18:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T23:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/?p=3953"},"modified":"2011-09-19T13:24:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T18:24:59","slug":"de-damming-the-dutch-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/de-damming-the-dutch-delta\/","title":{"rendered":"de-damming the dutch delta"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n[The Haringvliet Dam<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

In recent years, as they seek to rethink the flood control infrastructures and climate defense systems of the Mississippi Delta, American politicians, engineers, planners, and designers have, with good reason<\/a>, looked to the Netherlands<\/a> for inspiration and expertise.<\/p>\n

This is entirely natural, as the Netherlands has long been the world’s most sophisticated laboratory for deltaic infrastructural experimentation. \u00a0In this vein, a recent studio at Harvard GSD, run by Nina-Marie Lister and Pierre Belanger, looked at potential futures for the region around the city of Dordrecht in the Rhine-Meuse Delta.<\/p>\n

One of the projects that emerged from this studio, Kimberly Garza and Sarah Thomas’s “de-Damming the Dutch Delta”, makes a proposal that has a great deal of relevance for discussion of the future of the Mississippi Delta: open the massive (3-mile-long) Haringvliet Dam, permit salt and fresh water to mix freely again in the Haringvliet estuary, and make the resultant emerging aquatic ecology the central organizing infrastructure of an alternate urbanism.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of things that make this project particularly compelling.<\/p>\n

The first is the central role that Garza and Thomas give to re-thinking a key datum. \u00a0Landscape architects have paid increasing attention in recent years to the ways that both standardized measurements and standardized measuring tools serve to not only measure landscapes, but also to shape them. \u00a0(Gunter’s Chain and the Jeffersonian Federal Land\u00a0Ordinance\u00a0of 1785<\/a> being two connected examples that have received a fair bit of attention<\/a>.) \u00a0Garza and Thomas identify one such generative measurement, the\u00a0Normaal Amsterdam Peil<\/a>, or NAP. \u00a0The NAP dates to 1675, when it was established Mayor Johannes Hudde to denote the average summer high flood elevation of the sea adjacent to Amsterdam. \u00a0The use of the NAP spread widely through Europe, and is used to establish littoral policies, laws, and regulations. \u00a0(The coastline drawn for the Netherlands on a normal map, for instance, is the coastline as set by the boundary between water and land at NAP.) The functional effect of the NAP, then, is to reify a “binary relationship”, as Garza and Thomas say, “between land and water”: on this side of the line drawn using the NAP, you have water; on the other side, you have land. This at once expresses <\/em>and reinforces <\/em>an attitude about the way that humans use and occupy littoral terrain, which privileges certain programs — such as the construction of dams that neatly separate salt and fresh waters — while excluding the possibility of other programs — such as an economy based on the biological productivity of the fluctuating gradient that typically occurs when salt and fresh waters mix.<\/p>\n

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\n[Registering fluctuating deltaic conditions]<\/em><\/p>\n

To re-open the possibilities that a more complex understanding of the relationship between land and water<\/a> would permit, Garza and Thomas propose the replacement of the NAP with a dynamic Normaal Amsterdam Peil, or d(NAP), which would measure water level not as a single datum, but a gradient of possibilities, ranging from a summer low to a winter high and beyond to the highs produced by flood conditions. The incorporation of true flood conditions into the conception of normal <\/em>is exceptionally important, as it produces an understanding under which flood conditions are not unexpected disasters, but anticipated and recurring conditions of the landscape — normal.<\/p>\n

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1\u00a0This capacity to generate massive change through comparatively small intervention is what we at\u00a0mammoth <\/em>have described as thegenerative capacity of infrastructures<\/a>. \u00a0Our friend Brian Davis, though, reminds us that it is not just a capacity of infrastructures; it is a\u00a0fundamental capacity of landscape<\/a>, essential to the landscape-ness of landscape. Put more simply, when you work with landscape, you get more out of it than you put into it. (And what you get will often surprise you — landscape transforms, alters, and weirds<\/em>, which is why it always entropically resists attempts to polish and control it.)<\/p>\n

This overlap between the capacity of landscape and the capacity of infrastructure is quite intriguing conceptually; it serves to explain why, for instance, an increased interest in infrastructures emerged within and fed the growth of the nascent discipline of landscape urbanism, as well as why the work of architects within that discipline tends to feel so much like landscape architecture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Having developed the conceptual grounds for their project, Garza and Thomas make two deceptively simple moves, which they suggest could have the effect of generating new economies, new patterns of land use, and ultimately new urbanization within the Dordrecht region1<\/sup>. \u00a0The first, as mentioned above, is to open the Haringvliet Dam, permitting fresh water and salt water to mix again within the Haringvliet estuary, as well as restoring silt-depositing tidal dynamics.<\/p>\n

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The second move is the provision of “bivalve infrastructures”, constructed armatures (above) which\u00a0accelerate\u00a0the development of bivalve reefs on new subaqueous ground produced by restored silt deposition. \u00a0Garza and Thomas explain why they are so keen on the restoration of that process of silt deposition and the development of bivalve ecologies:<\/p>\n

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…the ground is transformed with the accretion of the estuary\u2019s most vital resource: mud. Together with tidal dynamics, silt and sedimentation of the mudlfats enable reefs to build up and accumulate, hosting the colonization of thousands of bivalve species, one of the basic building blocks of intertidal ecologies. The benthic and pelagic foodshed begin to thrive: plankton and bacteria, clams and crabs, smelt and salmon, beavers and seals, reeds and cattails, willows and poplars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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…bivalves have the ability to generate new economies… during the Middle Ages the Dutch economy once thrived on the delta. The establishment of bivalve reefs would enable the habitations of a larger bio-system, including salmon, flounder, oysters and mussels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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If we focus on the economic importance of the oyster, full economic value goes beyond dockside value. In addition to primary sales of raw, unshucked products, there are economic benefits from secondary services such as: shucking and packing houses, transport and manufacturing of prepared oyster products and retail sales. The shell itself is used in several different products, from \u2018oyster shell calcium\u2019 to \u2018oyster shell concrete.\u2019 More interestingly, the city of Dordrecht can utilize the oyster and the intertidal zone to generate a pearling industry. Mudflats will generate bivalve economies altering urbanization patterns inside and outside the dike and ultimately will position Dordrecht as a global player.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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2\u00a0Or,\u00a0“opportunities for a flood-based economy”<\/em>, as Laci Videmsky (who\u00a0was also in this same GSD studio<\/a>)\u00a0noted on twitter<\/a> — with specific reference to Bangkok, but easily applicable to both Louisiana and the Haringvilet.<\/div>\n

This vision of urbanization re-organized around the productive capacity of an ecologically healthier landscape2<\/sup> is not only a vision of a new landscape for Dordrecht; it also represents (or, more accurately, exemplifies) the re-organization of landscape architecture into a discipline that is concerned not merely with “staging and decorating… destination environments”<\/a>, but with the capacity of landscape to serve as infrastructure<\/a>. It is not surprising that this work is coming out of the GSD — given the recent concentration of the academics and practicioners who have been arguing for such work there — but it is encouraging to see it emerge and give designed form to the possibilities that they have outlined.<\/p>\n

[Click below to see more images from Garza and Thomas’s project; click on the images to see them larger. The captions were written by Garza and Thomas.<\/em><\/p>\n

Garza and Thomas’s project\u00a0will be featured<\/a> in the forthcoming issue of Bracket, [Goes Soft]. \u00a0I haven’t talked much about the softness of Garza and Thomas’s proposal, but it is also notable for the way that it literally deconstructs a hard, engineered infrastructure in favor of the adaptive and flexible resilience of a new system dependent on biological infrastructures. No doubt readers of Bracket 2 will find worthwhile insights into the softness of their proposal there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Two other notable projects to emerge from the studio: Laci Videmsky and Casey Elmer’s\u00a0Continuous Region<\/a>, and Gyoung Tak Park, Haein Lee, and Soomin Shin’s\u00a0Ecology as Industry<\/a>; both are fascinating, as projects, and as glimpses at what a program of urban design influenced by Belanger’s argument for the prominence of\u00a0landscape infrastructures<\/a> might look like.]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Located at the confluence of the Rhine-Meuse-Schledt rivers, the Delta is part of a 7,000 kilometer long river system that traverses 7 countries and flows to the North Sea in the Netherlands.<\/div>\n

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The flyway encompasses 117 countries from Europe, parts of Asian and Canada, the Middle East, and Africa.<\/div>\n

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The Nieuwe Waterweg is the only access to the North Sea.<\/div>\n

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Despite countless attempts to protect the land from the sea, the Dutch coast has eroded more than 5 km in four centuries.<\/div>\n

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The estuary is where the river intersects the sea. In the first half of the Twentieth Century, engineering projects drastically altered the confluence of river and seawater, eliminating estuarine ecologies.<\/div>\n

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The estuary is a product of human engineering and natural processes, in a constant state of movement.<\/div>\n

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Mudflats are situated at the threshold between water and land. Within this ecological zone, mudflats contain species that enable larger ecological communities to exist and thrive.<\/div>\n

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The Haringvliet Dam (constructed in 1970) has altered inland tidal influence from 2-3 m [historically] to 20 cm [in the present], and transformed the river into a fresh water reservoir.<\/div>\n

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Normaal Amsterdam Peil (NAP) was established in 1675, as a vertical datum from which sea level rise can be gauged. Used throughout the world, the NAP establishes national policies, laws, and regulations on the basis of one set water level. \u00a0Transforming the concept of the NAP, the d(NAP) — “Dynamic Normaal Amsterdam Peil” — acknowledges various water levels (as the “Normaal”) to address dynamic hydrological systems that are in a constant state of flux.<\/div>\n

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During the Middle Ages, fisheries generated a large portion of the Dutch economy. \u00a0Today, the Netherlands imports a majority of its fish and bivalves from Canada, Greenland, and various European countries.<\/div>\n

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Bivalve reef habitats support over three hundred species of commercial value.<\/div>\n

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Dry land agriculture is the dominant land use pattern in the Netherlands. \u00a0Opening of the Haringvliet Dam creates new land-use opportunities: agriculture to aquaculture.<\/div>\n

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The river is currently contained behind the existing dike lines, which coincide with the limit of the 100-year floodplain. Relocating the dike (shown in red) provides shifts in land-use patterns to accomodate aquaculture economies.<\/div>\n

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There are various methods and armatures used to establish bivalve reefs.<\/div>\n

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This illustrative cross-section taken through the Rhine-Meuse river, intersecting Tiengmeten island, demonstrates the bivalve economies established through the opening of the Haringvliet Dam. \u00a0By utilizing the existing dike and island as a transportation network and storage infrastructure for bivalve and fish industries, dry-land agricultural areas are transformed into robust productive landscapes. \u00a0Economically revitalization is paired with the generation of a robust estuarine ecology.<\/div>\n

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This illustrative cross-section taken through the Rhine-Meuse river demonstrates the habitats established through the opening of the Haringvliet Dam. \u00a0Through the establishment of mudflats, new ecologies emerge along a lengthened gradient, enabling housing corridors, recreational pockets, and dynamic species communities.<\/div>\n

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This illustrative cross-section taken through the Rhine-Meuse river, intersecting the city of Dordrecht, demonstrates the economies established through the harvesting of pearl oysters. \u00a0The city of Dordrecht’s edge, historically defined by a linear dike system, is now transformed into a meandering dike system. \u00a0Corridors for pearl oysters and cockles are made available through the weaving of the dike, in and out of the cityscape, creating salt water pockets for cultivation. \u00a0The dike, historically used as a flood control barrier, serves a multitude of functions for the pearling oyster industry: commercial transportation, collection area, docking infrastructure, and storage facilities. \u00a0Such bivalve ecologies generate a local work-force, fuel an international economy, and establish a cultural identity for the city of Dordrecht.<\/div>\n

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Through the establishment of estuarine conditions, Dordrecht is positioned as a global player within seafood, real estate, fashion retail, and tourism markets.<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[The Haringvliet Dam] In recent years, as they seek to rethink the flood control infrastructures and climate defense systems of the Mississippi Delta, American politicians, engineers, planners, and designers have, with good reason, looked to the Netherlands for inspiration and expertise. This is entirely natural, as the Netherlands has long been the world’s most sophisticated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[594,15,43,92,5],"tags":[442,504,638,247,121,639,484],"class_list":["post-3953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-floods","category-infrastructure","category-landscape-architecture","category-student-work","category-urbanism","tag-deltaic","tag-generative-infrastructures","tag-kimberly-garza","tag-landscape-infrastructures","tag-netherlands","tag-sarah-thomas","tag-soft-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3953"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5641,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3953\/revisions\/5641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}