Date of Award
Spring 6-3-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Suzanne Mathew
Second Advisor
Ann Kearsley
Third Advisor
Lindsay French
Abstract
A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.
Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water resources due to climate change and over-extraction of groundwater have drastically impacted the region’s ability to sustain itself agriculturally. Suitable profits were not forthcoming. The landowners would forcibly abandon their lands and hardly spend money to revegetate those lands if no added value or profit was ensured. Shrinking along with the farmlands are the 5% left pristine native riparian thorn scrub woodlands. They serve as a crucial migration corridor for local wildlife. The thesis is to give voice to the right of nature and the non-human life in this region and see whether centralizing and recovering the fragile environmental systems humans messed up might suggest a new way of living with the border landscape instead of constantly politicizing it. Overtime, by recalling and working with nature’s innate intelligence, we can raise the awareness of a responsible human-nature relationship on both sides of this liquid ‘border’
Recommended Citation
JIA, YINGFAN, "Liquid Border" (2023). Masters Theses. 1029.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1029
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons, American Politics Commons, Animal Studies Commons, Community-Based Learning Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis Commons, Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Economic History Commons, Educational Sociology Commons, Environmental Design Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Graphic Design Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, Illustration Commons, International Relations Commons, Labor Economics Commons, Labor History Commons, Landscape Architecture Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, Migration Studies Commons, Political Economy Commons, Political Theory Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons, Social History Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Tourism Commons, United States History Commons, Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons, Work, Economy and Organizations Commons
Comments
View exhibition online: Yingfan Jia, Liquid Border