Urban Runoff and the City of Relations - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 32

Homes has become a desirable subdivision and is now one of the more
expensive places to live in Davis. Social equity has been sacrifi ced in the
pursuit of more environmentally friendly residential living. 80 However,
many of the design ideas of Village Homes have been applied to other
notable master planned developments, such as Civano (Tucson, Arizona),
Prairie Crossing (Grayslake, Illinois), and Coffee Creek (Chesterton, In-
diana) in various ways. 81
Village Homes and its successor projects are important because they
demonstrate a gradual reconciliation between the scientifi c and artistic
camps of landscape architecture and ecological planning, as evidenced by
a growing number of theorists and practitioners who embrace both the
aesthetic and scientifi c aspects of site design. Although McHarg is fre-
quently criticized for forwarding a rational method for landscape design,
he catalyzed a new generation of landscape theorists and practitioners
to reassert the importance of the landscape perspective in a variety of
ways. 82 His approach to urban runoff has been incorporated and modifi ed
by landscape practitioners such as William Wenk, Andropogon, Murase
Associates, and Herbert Drieseitl to address both ecological and social
fl ows in urban stormwater projects such as Shop Creek in Denver, Colo-
rado; the Water Pollution Control Laboratory in Portland, Oregon; and
Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany. 83 Like Village Homes, these projects
interpret cities as relational achievements and suggest how the connections
between urban residents and their material surroundings can be confi gured
differently.
Conclusions
Source control as an alternative to the Promethean approach of storm-
water management serves as a reform-based movement to signifi cantly
change how urban runoff is addressed. The approach also hints at more
radical forms of urban water practice as fi rst proposed by Olmsted in
the nineteenth century. An infl uential group of contemporary landscape
theorists and practitioners advocate for a very different conception of
landscape design, one that does not fall back on the false choice between
natural science or aesthetics but rather embraces a relational perspective.
Such a logic not only has implications for the technical practices of urban
runoff but also more profoundly challenges the idea that cities are devoid
of nature or that urban nature is something to be controlled. Ultimately,
the challenges to conventional stormwater management demonstrate that
the shaping of urban water fl ows is a deeply political endeavor (I return