Environmental Engineering Reference
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The method was fundamentally flawed and I was disheartened because I had put
years of effort into something that was not working. Instead of giving up I took an unex-
pected step, I decided to do the entire project over again—my way. My new work on
the Hackensack Meadows became my thesis for a combined master's degree in architec-
ture and landscape architecture. Luckily Penn was a haven for good thinking and I was
exposed to the systems thinking through the Systems Sciences Program at the Wharton
Business School. I was soon infected with the systems thinking bug and I decided to
apply it to my thesis. System dynamics were the words of the day, so I decided to map-
change by working slowly backward through history, recording change, to discover how
it got to its current state. I figured out the control points from where I could best leverage
and manage the system. If I was lucky I could use that knowledge to steer the system
into what potentially could be a model for urban ecology whereupon both ecological and
human systems could flourish.
The impairment of natural water flow by roads and railroads was unavoidable, but I
noticed that the invasive
Phragmites communis
, a common reed, thrived in the polluted
water. Through an early attempt at what I now call proto-Scoping and proto-Partnering I
connected with Dr. Kathy Seidel, an underfunded and disregarded researcher at the Max
Planck Institute in Germany, who had used a similar approach in a similar ecosystem.
14
Years later I realized that she was the godmother of wastewater treatment using wetland
species when she placed levies around highly polluted ponds next to the Rhine, then
purposely planted the same invasive reed on the banks to treat the water. The polluted
water was filtered through the plants' roots and the levy sand filter and returned, greatly
improved, to the urban system. Her work gave me hope and strangely connected me to
those roads and rail roads in the Hackensack Meadows. Unfortunately, although I knew
now I had a methodology and solution for the salt marsh, it was too late, the studio work
failed to saved the wetland and as a consequence the state refused to pay for the studio's
previous work and funding for my work.
I was looking for the maximum potential of the system by understanding where the
system had been, where it was coming from and where it could potentially go. In other
words I sought to capture the possibilities and use them because they most likely repre-
sented the way of the least effort. Sadly without funding the prototype that may have been
the basis for the largest wastewater wetland system in the country was never constructed.
Fortunately the journey was worth the disappointment, as the process has influenced my
work for the subsequent 40 years. Although I discovered that my way of thinking about
planning differed from my mentor, my experience with McHarg helped bridge the ecology
and engineering of an entire new town in one of the most densely populated and polluted
regions of the world.
The story is poignant because the stakes are infinitely higher now and the need for cre-
ative solutions and McHarg's willingness to take on the impossible is needed more than
ever. The El Paso/Juarez metroplex is just as important as New Orleans East or New York
City in establishing a new discipline referred to by many names (ecoindustrialization, sus-
tainable urbanism, ecocities) but essential for our collective future nonetheless.
The issues are ever more complex and the traditional resource and funding structure
to support positive work are diminishing. The new world requires a systems thinking
approach which Donnella Meadows referred to as “discovering the key points in how
we enter the system.” It is the discovery of the pressure points that take the least physical
and monetary resources and incorporate the creative power within all of us to accomplish
what seems to be the impossible (Figures 31.22 and 31.23).
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