A Short Tour

See this guy almost everyday.

End of the path! On this side at least.

Perfect place for a mittagspause

Extrablatt cafe! Our office.

Andrew and I posting this!

Relaxing

Playing

One of the bächle at night. Ein bisschen eery.

My bike loves having its photo taken. Seriously, it sometimes wont get out of the picture.

When a city serves habitat, that habitat serves its citizens. How do we quantify this for effective planning and design?

I have just read an excellent paper titled: "Toward Ecosystem Services as a Basis for Design" by Windhager et. al., and its perspective has significantly raised the stakes for environmental design. ‘Ecosystem services’ is a term adopted by economists to describe the measurable benefits that the natural environment provides to humans at no cost, benefits we would have to provide for ourselves if our surroundings ceased to provide them (if even possible, at great cost). From the paper: “These services include the manufacture of critical ‘products’ such as breathable air; fishable, swimmable, and drinkable water; cycling of atmospheric gases, nutrients, and waste; and a host of others, including benefits such as ecotourism, derived from the primary ecosystem services.” Other less measureable services include public health and community benefits derived from nature contact, such as recreation opportunities, improved physiological function (particularly healing), improved cognitive function (particularly in children), stress and anxiety reduction, greater community cohesion and participation, higher property values near green space (this of course is measurable), and even a higher inclination to proactively care for the environment. Researchers are just scratching the surface with many of these secondary services, as the underlying mechanisms for some of them remain mysterious. For the purposes of this paper, mainly primary services are considered.

While all environmental researchers are aware of the myriad ecosystem services granted from a healthy ecosystem - even an urban one - and an increasing number of environmental designers, architects, and regional planners are as well, coordination of these parties for effective design and maintenance of urban landscapes that support those services remains a critical challenge. The paper identified performance assessment as a significant missing link in the effort to legitimize professed environmental design goals through existing certification processes such as LEED and more recently SITES. Too often are credits and certifications awarded for initial design and construction of buildings or landscape installations without periodic assessment of the performance of such sites with regards to their actual overall "sustainability" and ecosystem support.

Designing, building, and testing the quality and quantity of ecosystem services then serves several goals: supporting the health and well being of urban environments for people, promoting the myriad ecosystem services that ecosystems are capable of providing - and thus encouraging public support for their enhancement in policy and design, providing a robust public argument for ecosystem protection and regeneration in general, and insuring quantifiable returns on investment from the costs of LEED or SITES design, construction, and maintenance. In order to make this process more effective, more research is needed to quantify these ecosystem services and their mechanisms in general, and better methods and models are needed to measure the barriers, requirements, and indicators of success for their perpetuation on specific sites. Without an effective framework for assessing these services in response to design efforts that promote them, their promotion will not gain ground in the realm of policy, funding, oversight, and regional planning at a national or global scale. In addition to these research needs, better communication is necessary between researchers, designers, builders, occupants, planners, and funding agencies. As the paper quotes, the line between these players must necessarily be blurred.

With regards to our project on the Dreisam River, it will be beneficial to first identify the ecosystem services offered by the Dreisam. One way to recognize the significance of the river, from the ecosystem services perspective, is to imagine the city of Freiburg without the Dreisam. What else would be missing? What if this river, like so many in American cities, had been piped and buried? We will write a post about this as a larger idea soon. As for the planning and design of the Dreisam, there are indeed many players involved. Which of these players are aware of the Dreisam’s many ecosystem services? How could they be educated about them so as to increase their support for healthy environmental design and policy? How could the vast environmental research facilities of Freiburg be better linked to urban designers, planners, and policy makers?

A student reading

Two collapse after cycling

Jogger passes by.

Room for the ducks. Several of these had just reached adulthood.

Hard to quantify: peaceful relaxation.
A river warrior hard at work while a family enjoys their serene surroundings.

Location: Extra Blatt Cafe (the new Uber Dreisam Cafe)

Player #1: Jörg lange

SO, Andrew and I had our first meeting with Important Person Nummer Einz: Jörg Lange, author of magical book Die Dreisam, a book that will hopefully prove to be resoundingly helpful in our project, despite being written entirely "auf Deutsch." We're working on a slow translation. This book, broken out from its shiny plastic, instantly became ein Schatzkiste - a treasure chest - filled with beautiful photographs from the early Rhine (the larger river system from which the Dreisam is fed), maps of the changing topography, and almost stop-motion-like photographs of various development and restoration projects that have happened along the river in the last few decades. This book WOULD be our entire project, if only we could decipher its secret code: Deutsch. But then I suppose we would be rendered useless, really.


     
So last friday morning we both hustled to a very unprepared interview with Jörg in his hard-to-locate office above Süden, the wonderful local-produce restaurant located in our very own Vauban. We started off our interview with what we thought were some good warm-up questions, asking him if he could give us a brief overview of the history of the Dreisam, to which he responded that it was "not possible," as well as asking him which themes he considered to be the most crucial right now concerning the Dreisam, whether it was political, economical, sociological, or ecological, to which he shrugged and replied "yes, all." He seemed a little exhausted with us already, so Andrew and I nervously eyed each other and decided to go for the distantly-knowledgeable-yet-humble approach of probing him with questions that hinted to more of a background in the history of the Dreisam than we perhaps truthfully knew, which worked out quite nicely and soon he opened up to us about his skepticism with the potential effectiveness of the newly elected Green Party to be able to get any good legislation passed through the lingering legacy of the 60-year reign of the Christian Democratic Party. He informed us of the miscalculation of the architect Tuller when he straightened the Rhine (better for transportation and trading), mis-measuring the allotted space for a dam and leaving only .5 meter where there should have been 1 meter extra in case of flooding.
          With the straightening of the river, the habitat of the river bed changed dramatically, as straightening of a river increases flow rate which results in increased sedimentation, altered area of flood plains, change in species composition as plants are selected towards resilience of faster river flow (such as stronger root systems), and competition breaks out between dry species and special adapted flood-plain species (silver willow, silver poplar). Some of these flood plain species have some cool attributes, including relying on Lenticels (such as Wild Cherry); cells that allow the plant to breath through its bark when the root systems are drowned in water in heavy flooding. The Dreisam is extremely narrow, as are its banks, with walk/bikeways running along the waters edge along most of its length, leaving just enough room for some seriously thick vegetation and a grassy ledge suitable for picnicing or siesta-ing. This is enough habitat for many bird species, and small fish. However, one of the biggest goals of longterm NGO involvement in the river's management, is the re-introduction of salmon, or "wundefische." In 1850 the river Rhine and all it's connecting distributaries were abounding in salmon. 1 million salmon would migrate up the Rhine each year, until the Sandoz fire in Switzerland in 1986 that released tons of agrochemicals into the river, turning it red.  However, travel up the Rhine is made virtually impossible by the 10 different dams from Strasbourg on, created to manage the river's flow. 2 of these dams have made efforts to assist the salmon; at Gumshyne Dam a salmon bridge was created to assist the natural spawning cycle of the fish, and is also used as an educational resource for visitors, who can view the salmon traveling through. Excursion-zeit!
       Jörg informed us that all of these dams and power plants located along the river are located in France, making it a political hurdle for these groups, as France is more interested in power than the welfare of the "wundefische," and was granted the rite to use the water how they please after WWI. This is likewise a similiar hurdle in dealings with the Netherlands, with the Haringvlietdam, creating an enormous barrier for the salmon. In 2010 the Dutch government had pledged to open the dam, but a change in government yielded an a change in plans. The dam is still closed. I'm curious about this case, because after our meeting with Jörg I still had a few questions. What environmental implications for Holland would opening the dam mean? I doubt its as simple as I'm "made it" here, villianizing the new Dutch government. In fact, Jörg painted a pretty picture of Germans in terms of their support for the Dreisam's health, while also suggesting that France and the Netherlands have little interest in restoring the Rhine. But what's really going on here? It's not that German's are the most compassionate and environmentally responsible folks around, was this just a little country-bias? Something to be explored a little more. 
       We encountered a similar curiousity when Jorg told us about the next major project for restoring the dreisam which would be to "give it more space." The only question is if there is enough money. I asked Jorg how the community living in that area feels about this project. He laughed at my use of the word "community" asking if Freiburg wasnt the community in question and clearly Freiburg is in support of the Dreisam. Andrew clarified that we're using the term community to refer to the smaller community within Freiburg that may have a different stake in development of the Dreisam, for example, a residential community in that neck of the woods who might have some "qualms" with expanding the river. He kind of scoffed at this as well, as clearly the Freiburg community is in support.   For Andrew and I however, this was a huge shock, because we could easily imagine a project like this back in the States being met with avid opposition from people who would argue that widening a river in their backyard would perhaps bring virus-carrying mosquitoes, add a dangerous element to their neighborhood, possibly encroach on their property, not to mention construction and maintenance noise and potential costs. 


       Overall our meeting with Jörg was a HUGE success. He is a very busy man and we were extremely grateful that he not only took time out of his busy schedule to speak to two Americans on a topic we know so little about, but he gave us a copy of his big glossy magic book. He led us in some great directions, and connected us to a few other players we might seek out. 




        *A Short Disclaimer: I dont claim that everything I've written here is fact. Most of the information here today was received in Genglish from Jörg Lange, and Wikipedia links obviously come with their own potentially dubious sources. These are a mere wading-into of these issues, some to be explored in much deeper, scholarly-researched steps. Any additional information or corrections anybody has would be wonderfully appreciated*

          

              

Between the River and its People

Is there a symbiosis between the river Dreisam and the community of Freiburg? We’re here to study the dynamic between River and Society. What does it mean to this community to have a resource like the Dreisam running through it? There are tons of benefits of having a resource like this in the center of an urban environment. Having a river supports the ecology of an area, increasing biodiversity by providing habitat for different species of flora and fauna, and even providing critical transportation routes for aquatic species like salmon. It creates a valuable public space used for recreation, allowing space for barbecuing, walking or biking, or laying in the grass with friends. It allows people to repair the loss of connection with nature, a sad attribute of our post-industrial development and increasing isolation from community and place. A green space like this can help to increase this sense of place, providing a connection to resonating landscape of an area. Furthermore, a resource like this supports local economy by increasing property values of neighboring businesses and residential areas. Most crucially, a river has multiple public health benefits, including providing space for physical activity, providing habitat for air filtering plant species, and mitigating the effects of the Urban Heat Island [the effect of rising air temperatures as humidity and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from power plants, cars, etc. are trapped in the immediate atmosphere, raising the temperatures of dense urban environments].

With all these seemingly positive effects, we have to ask, is the Dreisam a “successful” public resource? Are people pleased with this green public space? How is the Dreisam managed? Is it considered “healthy” as an ecological environment? In what ways is this health measured and monitored? What policy is in place to protect the Dreisam? How does urban design influence the Dreisam and vice-versa? What groups are dedicated to the cause of the Dreisam? How does the community of Freiburg feel about the reclamation efforts made by various NGO’s in the area to expand the river into its original flood-plain beds? These are just some of the questions we plan to explore in our study of the Dreisam.

Through literature reviews, relevant excursions and interviews conducted with various key-players in the formation and conservation of the Dreisam, we plan to set upon a detective trail to assess whether this is a success story of a green resource and whether something like this could be implemented somewhere else. Specifically, we want to take away from this experience knowledge about the management of a river system and whether any of these strategies are viable for river systems in US cities.