Three dimensionality and green infrastructure

Land is three dimensional. It is not a surface, or even an interweaving of surfaces. It is a system that changes over time.

This is an idea that Kristina Hill has reiterated many times already in the few short weeks we’ve been back in school, and it’s an especially important thought to keep relevant in this moment. Our move online during the pandemic is changing the way we receive information. We often take two dimensional information as the whole story, but this is misleading.

This summer, I worked for a rain garden installation crew in Minneapolis, MN. Our biggest challenge as a team was the week we spent managing the flow of a small underground stream. The location of this installation is known to have a network of small streams, but even had we checked out a “map of West Saint Paul’s underground streams,” we would have struggled just as much. A two dimensional image can only do so much to convey the movement of water, through a gradient of material, over time. As a crew, we naively assumed that an underground stream would be a discrete, gently trickling flow of water that followed an underground, rock-lined creek bed. Instead, it was a persistent creep of water that followed the path of least resistance, emerging wherever we dug, turning everything into an unstable, muddy semi-solid.

Reflecting back on this, I realize the experience beautifully revealed the complexities of both land and green infrastructure. As much as we would have loved to install our standard retaining wall and rain garden— large boulders and an abundance of native, deep-rooted perennials — our solution (if we wanted it to last) had to be specific to its location. The solution required a three dimensional understanding of the land itself and of green infrastructure.

We can hope that the solution will succeed over time, but only with observation over time will we know if it was a worthwhile fix. This is an important point about green infrastructure. There is a risk of implementing a solution that over time requires a high input of cost, labor, and energy. If maintenance and upkeep requirements surpass their alternatives, it is hard to say that that infrastructure has succeeded.

For this reason, it’s important that we understand the solutions we implement as landscape architects, especially as we rely more and more heavily on the internet for our information. On the internet, information is so easily curated to mislead. The two dimensional screen and lack of additional sensory input — kinesthetic in particular — keeps us from truly knowing or understanding. This is, of course, my opinion. We’re headed toward a world where the internet can offer a far more engaging and realistic experience, too (I dread this). We need to be aware of who is behind, or profiting from, the solutions we decide to implement. Right now — as we witness the very real and scary impacts of climate change — we are especially vulnerable to solutions that sell on the surface, because we need some immediate relief, but good green infrastructure will require serious thought and an investment of time.