Anacostia Community Museum – Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waterways and Civic Engagement
Posted: January 2nd, 2013 | 1 Comment »A quick mention for an exhibition – Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waterways and Civic Engagement – currently running at the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington DC until next September 2013. Urban waterways are of course fascinating and essential and can be done well (think Paris of course with its urban beaches, the revitalised Thames, the rebirth of Manchester’s Ship Canal, Suzhou shady canal-side lanes etc) or not so good (think the mostly dreary canals of Beijing, the lost opportunities in LA etc).
Shanghai is included in this exhibtiion and is, as ever, a tale of two cities – there’s no doubt that Suzhou (Soochow) Creek is a great improvement environmentally on its condition a decade ago (trash, filth, dead dogs etc), yet too much of the creek-side path is blocked, controlled as private land by developers or concreted off for mysterious reasons. Meanwhile Sawgin and other creeks that are essential to Shanghai’s urban waterway system are largely ignored despite their history (Hongkou’s waterways were once major places of commerce and homes for boat dwellers).
Anyway, if you’re near Anacostia pop along – I think they’re exhibiting a fairly rare postcard I had of dragon boats on the Soochow Creek early in the twentieth century which shows that the Creek was, as well as a home for some and a commercial thoroughfare, also a place of fun, tradition and entertainment.
Soochow Creek in its glory days…
Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waterways and Civic Engagement
October 15, 2012 – September 15, 2013
Location: Main Gallery
Based on research by the museum on the history, public use, and attitudes toward the Anacostia River and its watershed and on review of urban waterway developments in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Louisville, London, and Shanghai, Reclaiming the Edge explores various issues regarding human interaction with natural resources in an urban setting. It looks at densely populated watersheds and at rivers as barriers to racial and ethnic integration. The exhibition also examines civic attempts to recover, clean up, re-imagine, or engineer urban rivers for community access and use. The opening of this exhibition kicks off the museum’s 45th anniversary.
Paul,
I attended the opening and was pleased to see that the brochure thanks you, as well as the US Consulate photographer and a few others from Shanghai who helped.
Bea