Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Nassauer (1997) and Eaton (1997). This extends ideas of integrated subject-object re-
lationships that have been explored by the philosopher of environmental aesthetics,
Arnold Berleant (1992).
Aesthetics
The 3R2N team decided to work from the principle that value and care are generated
in direct relationship to experience, perception, and the potential for common inter-
est. Our primary approach to experience was through an outreach and River Dialogue
program. As part of this program, we would take thirty to fifty people out on the river
in large, comfortable, glass-bottomed catamarans, which are used throughout the re-
gion as water taxis. We hired two to three boats for every event, typically twice a year.
We also decided to address conceptualization through our expert scientific field re-
ports and innovative maps. It was our hypothesis that these activities had the potential
to reconfigure the community's aesthetic perception and valuation of the three rivers
that are major features of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, landscape—the Mononga-
hela, Alleghany, and Ohio. The goal was to provide people with “on-the-water” expe-
riences that they may not have had before. The view from any one of these rivers re-
veals the recovery of the natural landscape at the level of the floodplain and on the
surrounding steep slopes that line the river valleys. While the view from the roads ad-
jacent to the rivers remains predominantly postindustrial and architectonic, it is an
aesthetic experience that overwhelms the river.
The Public Realm
As we began this initiative we had to develop an understanding of the regulation and
oversight of infrastructure and land use, as well as have some familiarity with the indi-
viduals that had a vested interest in that regulation. Through work with the scientists,
the project team developed a collective understanding of the failure of that infrastruc-
ture and its effects on the river ecosystems. We were most interested in the definition
of the problem and the range of solutions. Two things were clear. First, there were
very few data publicly available to inform decision making. Second, the advocacy and
support for clean water and recovering ecosystems in the region were relatively non-
existent despite the fact that the Allegheny County Sewage Authority was in a pro-
tracted legal battle with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address de-
cades of illegal sewage discharges into the three rivers (Hopey 2007). Furthermore,
land-use regulation was not taking into account the recovering landscape ecologies
and the area's long-term environmental and aesthetic potential. These were the fun-
damental points of public realm engagement for the project team.
Strategic Knowledge
The 3R2N Project (following the earlier Nine-Mile Run model) was designed to
address environmental questions through strategic knowledge and platforms for
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