N NOWACEK

CLIMATE CHANGE
& URBAN WATERWAYS

For generations, people growing up near water have known about tides and currents, marine life and swimming, and the implications of clouds, winds, and other storm predictors.

The Industrial Revolution significantly shifted those ways of life. Factories required access to waterfronts, and so waterfronts became spaces of industry. As more industries inhabited waterfronts and began discharging toxic waste, the life of the water, too, was impacted. Over time, citizens of coastal and riverine cities lost physical connection to the water, and as the toxins in the water increased, the water not only became a distant and dangerous, dehumanized space. Even today, most inhabitants of urban coastal spaces fear the water and what they don’t know about it—if they consider themselves coastal inhabitants at all.

Simultaneously, as climate change impacts coastal cities, public space will become scarcer as city populations grow. The water that surrounds confronts these places—the harbor, rivers, creeks, and bays—presents significant opportunities for the future.

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For ten years, I have been researching the construction of urban waterways as economic, cultural, and political spaces in order to reimagine social forms and systems that might help their communities negotiate climate change.
 

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