peachtree creek

Atlanta isn’t exactly known for its water. What I mean by that, is that Atlanta has not been historically viewed as tied to a major water source in the way that some other cities are known for. But the city does have an extensive network of streams running from the Chattahoochee and the north Georgia mountains. Only, as Atlanta has developed, the creeks have been relegated underground. Tech campus is actually in the process of restoring sections of the creek network back up to surface level.

My two experiences with the creek happened by chance, both while jogging. I crossed under the Piedmont bridge, to run along the BeltLine for a quarter mile or so before I was suddenly on en elevated train tressle, over the stream. It was the temperature change I noticed first, then the sound of flowing water, and finally the view down the creek bed itself.

 

 

David R. Kaufman has a book out this weekend, and an article in Creative Loafing detailing his decade long quest to “uncover the mysteries of Peachtree Creek”. Mostly by canoe, he explored the forgotten areas with a 4-by-5 camera.

A stream whose rich history and natural beauty has largely been pushed aside by roads, buildings, garbage, pollution – by a city that turned its back on what could be a magnificent resource.

Urban design thesis question: How to reintegrate the stream basin back into Atlanta, to expose it to the public, without destroying its character?

 

Title inspiration

So I googled “trace urbansim” recently and I found an interesting article from a Boris Brorman Jensen at Aalborg University called, “Rediscovering the City – Tracing Contemporary Urbanism” . Sound familiar? Here were the highlights:

• The ongoing debate on the contemporary city is an attempt to trace a more contemporary system of ideas for the understanding of those urban areas that we according to old metaphors about centre and periphery still designate the suburb.
• How do we perceive the contemporary city, how do we understand the contemporary city, and how do we represent the contemporary city.
• The suburb has become increasingly omnipresent and has dissolved the distinction between centre and periphery.
• The contemporary city is post-polycentric, and its meaning is produced by the network that exists between these vaguely defined centres.
• The transformation of the dominating economies from industrial production to an information-based distribution has devaluated the significance of the spatial categories that operate with distinctions in scale and limitations.
  
• As a consequence, the dispersed city is perceived as an operational field, and the globalized post-industrial urban development is becoming less comprehensible through typological definitions.
• The stories about the contemporary city are narratives about alterable and processual phenomena without stable geographies. The perception of the city does thus not represent essences with references to stable geometries and ideal models. 
• The contemporary city is formless and must be understood as a permanent generation. A rediscovery of the city makes a mark between pattern and generation.

If my thesis EVER starts to sound ANYTHING like this, somebody please tell me I’m in way over my head!!