WPLP

The following post is by Elizabeth Ramaccia, a second-year graduate student at MIT. Ms. Ramaccia is studying the Mill Creek Watershed as part of an MIT course by Professors Anne Spirn and James Westcoat. Her post below describes the class’s recent trip to West Philadelphia, where Elizabeth and her team explored the neighborhood and performed a ‘transect analysis.’ You can learn more about the course and view all of the students’ transect analyses at the course website.

Anne Whiston Spirn, James Westcoat and MIT students in West Philadelphia.

We clicked, zoomed, downloaded, and analyzed land use maps, census data, watershed maps, historical documents, and institutional reports. We represented what we knew about West Philadelphia as best we could with numbers, coded colors, symbols, and line weights. We layered plan upon plan – locations of inlets over topography over vacant properties over impervious surfaces – to begin to understand the workings of our various transects and the opportunities they might present. We also attempted to push beyond the aloof plan view that planners too often rely upon exclusively, diving into the ground-level images available to us through Google Streetview, sketching street sections and perspectives.

This proved to be invaluable preparation for our site visit. As a class, we compiled so much information, and yet we still felt that what we had acquired was only a mere fraction of what was available through databases, books, and websites. The act of visiting reminded me, however, how much information was inexpressible in the available data. While the data served us incredibly well as preparation for the site visit, it would not have held its own if we had to rely on it entirely. A schematic design based on analysis-from-afar would most likely have been incomplete or missed the mark.

A complete list of verbs that one must undertake to fully analyze and understand a site would include all those mentioned above. Additionally, it should include: walking, standing, stooping, questioning, discussing, sketching, photographing, conversing, videoing, measuring, noting, pointing, touching. I am certainly missing others. Together, the accumulation of these verbs allowed us to start understanding the essenses of West Philadelphia.

I felt invigorated by the experience of being in a place with the purpose of performing a site analysis. I had to consciously heighten all five senses to capture as much as possible and record it in words, drawings, photos, or in the recesses of my memory. My teammates Christophe and Jaime and I investigated with all of our senses activated. We felt the topography change under us. We saw and heard cars moving speedily down streets and front doors swinging open and shut. We noticed the subtle signs of placemaking on porches and stoops – potted plants, figurines, ashtrays. We saw shadows shrink from mid-morning to high noon, and we noted the places that stayed eternally in shadow. We re-envisioned the Mill Creek neighborhood before the cave-ins as we looked out over large, empty open spaces. We spoke with good people, some who grew up in West Philadelphia and would never leave, some who could not leave, and some who just arrived and seemed not to know how to think about their new place quite yet.

We entered into and left quickly from West Philadelphia, but we had been a part of it nonetheless. I now know it not as an idea, but as a real place. Its challenges are no longer hypothetical to me.
Perhaps just as important to the success of our project as the data we gathered, I left understanding that West Philadelphia is always working, changing, stagnating, living, trying. To maintain enthusiasm from a distance, I have to understand the dynamism of this place.

In October 2010, Alexa Mills of MIT’s CoLab visited the Earthskeepers, a group of middle school students in West Philadelphia. In the post below, which was originally published on CoLab Radio, Alexa describes her experience with the Earthkeepers and showcases their efforts to share their work with the larger the community.

The Earthkeepers, summer 2010. Photo by Anne Whiston Spirn.

The Earthkeepers, a team of high school community gardeners from West Philadelphia, want to tell the world the story of their garden. Aspen Farms has been a landmark in the Mill Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia since the 1970s. It hosts a gazebo, a mural, plots for local people, and plots for the Earthkeepers to discover the life cycle of, and market for, the food they eat.

As the director of CoLab media projects, I often work in partnership with the various community groups connected to CoLab to help them augment their media programs. This month I went to Philadelphia to work with the Earthkeepers, connected through an MIT Urban Planning course that is analyzing water preservation strategies in the same neighborhood.

I found fourteen capable teenagers led by Sister Alia and Sister Safiyah, two of Philadelphia’s most recognized gardeners (the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society awarded them first prize in a gardening contest this summer). The Earthkeepers wanted to make a movie about their garden, a project I believe in and want to continue to work on. But given that I’d never seen the high school computer lab they use and we didn’t know if the computers were loaded with movie-making software, we decided to start with a media project that was more likely to be realistic given the constraints.

And, in just a few intense hours, the Earthkeepers launched a blog, made their first three blog posts, and even wrote an about page for their site.

To start, we split the group in half: media producers and web designers. We did a collective brainstorm with the media producers on the various ways they could tell their story. Two decided to write poetry about their garden and three of them decided to do video interviews with the Flip camera I brought.

The rest of the students and I went to their school’s computer lab to make the blog. There were several problems.

The school blocks access to many websites, including wordpress, the free blog-making site. One of the students knew a workaround. They use https:// rather than http:// to get on Facebook and all the other sites they want to access. Despite this workaround, we were stalled; we had to re-enter the ‘s’ in https:// every time we clicked through to a new page.

Additionally, the school computers wouldn’t let students download photos from email or the web and then upload them to wordpress. After seeing a big red X appear as our header image after each of five tries, one of the students suggested that our header photo might be appearing on regular computers. To test her idea, I opened my personal laptop. Since the internet required a password, I went to the teacher in the room next door to ask for it. She informed me that no one knew the password; I would have to hand my computer over to the tech guy to let him set it up.

It was after 6:00, so the school tech guy was gone. Finally I resorted to my cell phone. Fourteen students gathered ’round my iPhone to see what the site looked like with the image they uploaded.

We went back to the media producers to see what they had made. They had two poems, three video interviews, and one recording of a poet reading her work. They learned how to log in to wordpress and create their posts. Hankering for a piece of gum, I left them in front of the computers while I searched my bag. By the time I found my gum, the students had figured out how to load their posts and clicked publish.

As a last step, I checked the computers for video editing software so that we could process their video interviews. The computers did not have Windows Movie Maker or any other program, as far as I could tell. Far from archaic, the computer lab is a clean space with several neat rows of black flat-screens. I had assumed upon entering they would have Movie Maker.

We were running out of time, so I loaded the videos from my own computer when I got home – easy enough, but the students didn’t get to learn how to do it, see what a shaky camera looks like, or make decisions about what questions to cut.

Upon further exploration of where the Earthkeepers could make their media in the future, I learned that the local community center at which they meet has neither computers nor internet access.

In sum, it seems as though a teenager in West Philadelphia who wants to tell the world a story about her garden has a long row to hoe.

Please take a moment to listen to Earthkeeper Erica Adeleye read her poem about gardening. See her full post here.

Videography by Cashmiere Mond.

The life a garden beholds is one of beauty.

A place where you can be one with nature and all creations.

From the birds to the bees, to the weeds and the leaves.

We all need a little dirt to grow!

The funny thing about a garden is that beauty lives within its gates.

And you will relize under it all something not so beautiful.

Thorns and weeds, grow there, the bugs may scare you and the soil may be messy, but they all help to create vivid colors.

Sweet aromas, and sensations, fruit and vegatables alike, play an important role in the gift of life.

In the garden where all is simple, pure and scerene.

This post is a conversation between Alexa Mills of MIT’s CoLab and Professor James Wescoat, who is an Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture specializing on water in environmental design at MIT. James and Professor Anne Spirn are conducting a course that analyzes how the City of Philadelphia can conserve thirty to fifty percent of storm water run-off in the Mill Creek neighborhood of West Philadelphia, which sits on a buried flood plain. This post was originally published on October 26, 2010 on CoLab Radio.

MIT students and Professor Anne Spirn depart Aspen Farms community garden to study their transects in the Mill Creek Watershed in October 2010. Photo by Professor Jim Wescoat.

Alexa Mills: What was your path to creating this course on Water, Landscape & Urban Design?

James L. Westcoat: This is the third iteration of the class. The course started, in its first incarnation, with local studies in MIT and Cambridge. We looked at water problems in our own home and community, and then looked at some of the solutions that are being generated internationally. Then, last year my co-teacher for this course, Anne Spirn, started talking to me about the work going on in Philadelphia: both the research she has been doing for over twenty years in West Philadelphia, and about how the new experiments that Philadelphia is doing with the Environmental Protection Agency are advancing the field of water resources management in the U.S. That really became attractive as a new way to approach the same ideas from the previous courses about studying U.S. and South Asian water resources management strategies.

It’s really a dream course. It’s a course I’d liked to have taught throughout my career, but it’s only since coming to MIT that we’ve been able to do this combination of studio, seminar, and environmental science all in one, and to find all the ways in which they can be integrated.

AM: I know that the students have to do case studies of other water management strategies to inform the Philadelphia context. What is your thinking behind the case studies component?

JLW: We’ll do case studies of relevant water resource management strategies in South Asia, which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Sometimes we have students with an interest in an adjacent region, say the Middle East, and we say, “Absolutely. Let’ see what we can draw upon in terms of innovations in that region.”

The idea behind the case studies is that the twenty-first century is a time when the innovations are happening world wide, and the U.S. won’t be solely in the export (export of ideas) model of the late twentieth century. There are still some people who think that it’s largely a one-way stream of innovation. From the get-go, that was not the idea in this course. The idea is that innovations are happening world wide, and one must search for them internationally; and one is likely to find solutions that are inspiring and adaptable. Sometimes it’s a different way of thinking about or looking at a problem, a different perspective rather than a different technical solution, which comparative case studies bring to the table.

For an example, you read about how community organizers will mobilize a water movement in rural India, and you’ll see how they lead a water pilgrimage from village to village raising awareness by a Gandhian-inspired walk on foot — which is not unlike the breast cancer walk that we saw yesterday here in Philadelphia. When we passed it, people might have thought, “Oh, that has nothing to do with what we will be doing,” but once they see the example of this water pilgrimage in India, they might remember the breast cancer walkers. Just imagine if there were walkers down these different urban water transects that we’re studying in the Mill Creek Watershed, or walks from the mouth of Mill Creek all the way down to City Line Avenue. That would be a consciousness raising activity.

It may be that no one picks up on that. But here is another example: just last night we had one team of students who started to look at the four blocks of an intersection—and having just had a talk on Islamic gardens, we thought, “You’ve got a Char Bagh,” and one starts to think, “Oh, we could have a model here, a conceptual model.” And that’s by a kind of imaginative analogy, and not a pure import, of ideas.

AM: What is a Char Bagh?

JLW: A Char Bagh is a four-fold garden, like the four gardens of paradise. In simple terms, there is this picture of a four-fold garden, and one starts to see the four parcels of land at an intersection, then one starts to say, “Oh, this is a pretty interesting way that space is organized.”

Professor Wescoat met the Earthkeepers, teen gardeners in West Philadelphia, in August 2010.

AM: You also brought your knowledge of Islamic Gardens to the course via a talk you gave at the New Africa Center in West Philadelphia. What was it like to give a talk to an African American Muslim community in Philadelphia?

JLW: It was fascinating! That was the part of the serendipity of this project. When we went to Philadelphia this summer to asses the possibility of doing the course, we met some of the community gardeners and found out that they’re an African American Muslim womens’ gardening group, and have been gardening with a philosophy of community development and their own convictions in mind. To be able to talk with them about the garden traditions, both in conceptual terms and also about the history of Islamic gardens in environmental design, was a real opportunity for me and something that interests them. It was unique to be able to give such a talk in an American-Muslim center.

One question raised by a person at the talk was really great: she asked about the relationship between community gardens in general and Islamic gardens, and suggested that one is not primarily thinking about whether there are Islamic gardens and gardeners in Philadelphia or Boston, but rather about how gardens created and tended by Muslims and other community members have shared meanings that really cross cultural boundaries.

AM: Do you have anything else to say about your experience speaking at the museum?

JLW: It was striking walking in there and seeing the historical photos on the walls. Some of the materials were from the earliest Muslim immigrants, often slaves brought against their will from Africa to the U.S. The manacles displayed had a profoundly disturbing impact.

Some of the photos around the museum space were taken during my childhood, especially of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and those images brought back memories of those times. That period of the 60s and 70s was so transformative for the urban neighborhoods we’re working in. It was a time of segregation and struggle. And the struggles associated with those urban movements came back into my consciousness through the images. These struggles were really complex; some were inspiring and others discordant. At the museum you have an African American Muslim perspective on history, some of the tensions of our lives and times, and some of the ways in which members of this community have been led to address them.

AM: How do you mesh this social aspect with the physicality of design?

JLW: Well, there is an emphasis on physical solutions because this is a design workshop. In a design studio physical solutions are foremost, but in a design workshop like ours, one is looking at the physical and the cultural/social strategies jointly, and so we really will try to get to a level of grounding community development ideas in physical transformations. One of the things that are important, especially for urban planning students who don’t have a design background, is getting a feeling for design by experimentation. What does it feel like to take a community development idea that’s a really good one and see how it lands on the ground? This is a great experience for someone who’s not going to work as a designer professionally, but who wants to know what it feels like working with designers. Conversely, the workshop challenges our design students to think about social driving forces, community-driven processes, and the long-term social implementation and impacts of design.

By working with the West Philadelphia community members we’re able to think much more deeply about the social aspect than would otherwise be possible. We can only do this type of course in Philadelphia because of Anne’s twenty years of experience with all of the community organizers and public officials, as well as the landscape. Even trying to do this in Cambridge, we could go out and interview and talk about the social aspects of the project, and still not be at the level where Anne is in Philadelphia.

Too often, water is designed or managed as just a physical substance, rather than something that has extraordinary significance for human livelihood, ecological systems, cultural meanings, and as a design element. And that’s what we really try to bring together, so that students feel comfortable looking at water in all of its different dimensions, and they’re able to draw them together in their work.

Post by Alexa Mills and Professor James Wescoat.

Post by Anne Whiston Spirn, James Wescoat, and Alexa Mills. This post was originally published on October 15, 2010 on CoLab Radio.

Photo by Anne Whiston Spirn.

Philadelphia, like most older US cities, has a combined sanitary and storm sewer system, which overflows into rivers and streams when runoff from heavy rainfall enters sewers, producing a flow that exceeds the capacity of sewage treatment plants. In fall 2009, the Philadelphia Water Department announced a landmark proposal to reduce combined sewer overflows through green infrastructure. A class of ten MIT Urban Planning and Architecture Masters students will explore the potential for this approach to reduce 30-50% of runoff from impervious surfaces in the Mill Creek Watershed, which drains about two-thirds of West Philadelphia.

Transect analysis is common in geomorphology and other fields of landscape research, but not to our knowledge in urban watershed planning. A transect ‘cuts across’ the watershed at selected intervals in order to (a) understand patterns of urban development from ridge to valley; and (b) understand processes of urban drainage that can inform design. We will study a series of transects within the Mill Creek watershed, both across the buried floodplain and along the main trunk sewer.

We are arrived in Philadelphia last night and will be here until Sunday gathering data for this project. Stay tuned to watch the project unfold, and eventually for a report on each of the seven transects we’re looking at.

This project comes out of the West Philadelphia Landscape Project, a decades-long local commitment to the people and landscape of West Philadelphia, where Professor Anne Spirn has been working since 1987.

Janice Trapp, Anne Spirn, and Frances Walker at Aspen Farms Community Garden

It was good to be back among old friends in West Philly recently. Frances Walker, life-long community activist and leader, drew me into her network once again to create a set of new relationships and new projects. To know Frances is to admire the force of her personality and her dedication to community.

In 1998, Frances invited me to join the Mill Creek Coalition’s Environment Committee, which led to a series of projects and friendships. A few years later, she came to MIT as a Mel King Fellow.

Frances grew up on the 5200 block of Arch Street. She is quick to point out that her childhood home is in the Dunlap neighborhood, not Mill Creek (which it borders to the north and east), but she did go to Sulzberger Middle School, brought her children up nearby, and, until a few years ago, lived on the 4900 block of Aspen, down the street from Aspen Farms Community Garden.

Frances with her mother and youngest sister, Louise.

Frances’s mother, Ola Mae Walker, received a letter from Barack and Michelle Obama on March 4, 2010 on the occasion of her 100th birthday.

Frances and her sister Alia: two community leaders who are bringing up the next generation of leaders.

The Earthskeepers, diplomas in hand, at the Mill Creek Recreation Center.

Frances’s sister Alia is the founder of Earthskeepers, an organization that works with high school students who learn about plants, gardens, and environmental stewardship. This summer they planted a garden at Aspen Farms and cleaned up and planted flowers in vacant lots in Mill Creek. They had a cook out and diploma ceremony at the Mill Creek Recreation Center to celebrate their accomplishments this summer.

The Earthskeepers and a vacant lot they cleared and planted.

Aspen Farms and Hayward Ford have been such an important part of WPLP for more than 20 years, almost from the very beginning, so it seemed unimaginable to return to Mill Creek and not to see Hayward, whose death last November was a tremendous loss. As I drove up to Aspen Farms to meet Frances and her sister Alia, I could not help looking for Hayward’s turquoise truck.

There is new leadership at Aspen Farms, and the garden is thriving. The co-presidents are Janice Trapp and Wanda Scott. The old red-white-and-blue benches have been painted “English garden blue,” a color Janice saw in a magazine, a color that complements the lush greens of the plants. Janice’s plot is full of wonderful personal touches, such as the teacup bird feeders.

Janice Trapp’s garden plot at Aspen Farms. Note the bird feeders she made from teacups mounted on poles.

Janice invited us to the meeting of the gardeners that evening at the American Legion hall and a potluck dinner afterwards in the garden. Two of the gardeners have been members of Aspen Farms since the 1980s, but most joined the garden more recently. All brought delicious food made from fruits and vegetables harvested from their garden plots.

Potluck dinner at Aspen Farms Community Garden.

The occasion for this recent visit was to lay the groundwork for a class on the Mill Creek watershed at MIT this fall. Jim Wescoat and I are teaching the class together, and this trip was his introduction to Mill Creek.

It seems appropriate to launch the WPLP blog with this story of old friends and new ones. The blog’s purpose is to serve as a place to read and tell stories about Mill Creek – the neighborhood, the watershed, and the people who live and work there. All associated with the WPLP and the Mill Creek are welcome to submit a post for the blog. Share your ideas and join the conversation.

Anne Whiston Spirn, founding director of the West Philadelphia Landscape Project