Designed for Life: Unearthing Just and Sustainable Urban Design through the Daylighting of Phalen Creek

Abstract

Although urban planning is increasingly addressing climate change and social equity, urban design has yet to fully realize its potential in creating more liberatory cities. While recent urban design theorists recognize the social possibilities of infrastructure, notions of what is social remain limited. If cities are to implement climate justice plans that move toward just and sustainable futures, our built form must embody and promote ways of being that generate restorative relationships with more-than-human worlds.
In this paper, I conceptualize an expanded role of urban design as an intervention for reimagining built environments and their ability to enable relationships of respect and reciprocity with beyond-human life. Pointing to current limitations in urban design, I illuminate the just and sustainable possibilities found in-between technology-focused sustainable design and socially-oriented design. To highlight such possibilities, this paper analyzes past and present efforts to daylight Phalen Creek in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Phalen Creek was a natural waterway buried in a pipe during early 20th century urbanization. Though removed from landscape, Phalen Creek’s environmental and cultural roles have become the impetus for daylighting the creek which will resurface and reconstruct part of the waterway. Phalen Creek’s environmental, Indigenous, and Immigrant histories make it an instructive case study expanding the liberatory possibilities of daylighting and urban design. Combining Julian Agyeman’s Just Sustainabilities with Infrastructural theory, Indigenous knowledge, and Environmental Justice principles, this paper frames daylighting as a means to realize and expand Just Sustainabilities and as a starting point in designing cities for all life forces.