Paper short abstract:

Like a ghost, Flint’s River Bank park languishes. This “landscape as infrastructure” vanishes as stormwater, poisoned by chemical spills, rushes through the Flint River. This paper uncover how even the beautification of the RiverBank Park cannot hide the consequences of human intervention.

Paper long abstract:

Through the middle of the city of Flint, Michigan, the Flint River runs, twisting through the landscape of ruined houses, empty storefronts, and weed covered banks. This river, source of vibrant trade with First Nations, and transportation for wood mills, transformed into a backdrop for car manufacturing, and then ruined by a city ripped in half with a highway.

In many places, rivers have been paved over. In Flint, the river changes as it reaches the city into a park, composed of six blocks, intended to work as a flood control project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. To cross the river downtown, you must drive down a four lane road, with running like ribbons access over bridges, cracking and crumbling concrete. Looking east, a failed dam project barely removed in tim, replaced by a new bridge. Fishers casting into the river. Laughing, crying. Ignoring the signs explaining the necessary limits of earring fish from the river.

Like a ghost, Flint’s River Bank park languishes. This “landscape as infrastructure” vanishes as stormwater, poisoned by chemical spills, rushes through the Flint River. This paper uncover how even the beautification of the RiverBank Park cannot hide the consequences of human intervention. the crumbling infrastructure echoing the crumbling economy of this Rust Belt City. Looking backward to the origins of the river, as a trading post for First Nations, one can trace how the industrial development, hidden by embracing industry as a natural evolution, create consequential environmental damage.