Contour: Walk the historic landscape of Seattle’s only river delta

Abstract

Within my academic studies in Urban Design & Planning and Landscape Architecture, I am interested in human-created landscapes, with a specific emphasis on mobility infrastructure and its impact on multi-species residents. This thesis, titled the Contour Project, examines the transformation of the Duwamish River into the Duwamish Waterway through a selection of place-based stories that address how settler changes to the landscape have impacted human and more-than-human communities. These twenty-one publicly accessible stories link via a QR code to a website. Some relationships between the landscape and its inhabitants have become obscured beneath concrete and forgotten over time. While other stories explore deep-rooted connections with regional symbols such as the salmon, unveiling the interplay between landscape alterations, driven by infrastructural requirements, and their ramifications on the multi-species inhabitants of the area. The purpose of this thesis is to bring all these stories to the front and place them within the contemporary landscape. By critically examining the values that have shaped the infrastructure and topography of the Duwamish, this project underscores the imperative to acknowledge the diverse range of communities present in the historic Duwamish River Delta. Understanding the various impacts on these communities is crucial for contemporary residents to fully comprehend the consequences of past actions. If we wish to avoid the shortfalls of past landscape alterations and revert the loss of cultural and biological diversity, we must make known more nuanced narratives that integrate all living processes in our histories of place. Through a better understanding of the inhabitants of our shared home, we can make more equitable decisions about changes to our infrastructural landscapes.