The following is the text from my talk this past weekend at Pecha Kucha: The Winter Session, Wellington 2015. I co-presented at this event with artist Kedron Parker and ecologist Paula Warren, fellow members of the study group associated with an online water sensitive urban design (WSUD) course offered through Monash University.
I spoke about the state of and potential for WSUD in Wellington, from the perspective of the connections I’ve been exploring between sense of place and urban design, particularly in regards to enhanced liveability. Much of my inspiration came from my coverage of this idea in a previous blog.
As Kedron mentioned and at her invitation, I completed the online course and was one of her study group’s participants. I’m a geographer and as such am very interested in the idea of place, our inherent sense of place, and the implications of that awareness; last year I started up a blog on that topic. Within the course, the concept of liveability – described as one of the key drivers of successful urban design – resonated in particular with my thoughts about place.
When considered holistically, these ideas of place and liveability are about connections to our local contexts; about knowing and sensing what I call our geography of habitation, and in that way more fully participating as residents. In the locational context of Wellington, water plays a significant role in that regard. And as an element of urban design, water ticks many boxes, not only as a potential enhancer of liveability, through interactions with public art installations courtesy of artists like Kedron, but also as a resource that can be sensibly managed, through practices like harvesting and stormwater management, to improve the sustainability and resilience of our city.
But it takes effort to foster these design elements, and our challenge in this regard comes from our historical practice. Traditionally we’ve developed our built environment over the top of and masking the natural; when the decisions that resulted in our current urban experience were implemented, managing these resources was all about control. As a result here in Wellington many of the elements of our local water cycle are out of sight, and therefore out of mind.
Were you to ask Wellingtonians about signs of their local water cycle, most would probably mention the harbor. For good reason – it is large, obvious, easily accessed; a well-known and well-used urban amenity; a star attraction that highlights this city as a wonderful place to live. But in terms of our water cycle, it is but one element – an important one to be sure – but one step along the path.
Wellington’s combination of physical geography and climate results in an intricate network of streams for instance, with the important function of transporting fresh water through the landscape and into the harbour we all enjoy. While it’s significant, both in terms of scale and potential to carry either clean water or pollutants to our harbour, that network is in fact hardly acknowledged within our cityscape.
The streams are still there, they still run with water, are inhabited with eels and fish, but are now relegated to underground pipes. As such they are out of reach to us, a lost connection to our geography, for some of us our history, and in terms of WSUD, a missed opportunity at enhanced liveability.
But there is good news because there are plenty of ways to change that, to re-establish meaningful connections with our local water cycle. So over to Paula now to talk about how, through our choices and basic WSUD practice, we can make that happen, improve the liveability of our city, and in doing so maybe heighten our deeply felt sense of this place…
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