Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Leeland McPhail
Second Advisor
Elizabeth Hunt
Abstract
In Providence, Rhode Island, much of the downtown area is built over a vast historic tidal estuary. Though we no longer see the salt marshes, wooded bluffs, or meadows that once characterized this landscape, we recognize their absence in contemporary crises of urban heat, flooding, polluted soils and stormwater runoff, and habitat loss. These conditions are particularly acute along the city’s industrialized river corridors, where vacant lots and parking areas sit idle, their history paved over and potential constrained by limited imagination and resources.
These lots - already experiments in fill and land building after centuries of disturbance - can be reconsidered as test plots for urban environmental and community engagement. By working intentionally within their current condition, these landscapes can be ‘amended’ to invite life to emerge from the pavement. Amidst the flat and inhospitable conditions of the postindustrial parking lot, brush and yard debris can shape new gathering spaces for people and support living urban soils after de-paving. Compost and urban landscape ‘waste’ are abundant and under-considered environmental resources in the city. Diverting this material away from the landfill and back to the land creates the opportunity for new relationships across green infrastructure, biodiversity, waste management, and community arts and education.
Layered into pavement where marsh once thrived, Watershed Amendments positions landscape ‘waste’ as the basis for experimental ecologies and participatory urban spaces that recall historic ecological richness, reconnect moments of the watershed, and invite experimentation and continual learning with the city.
Recommended Citation
Kaplan-Bucciarelli, Sophie, "Watershed Amendments: Assembling New Pervious Ground From Landscape Waste" (2026). Masters Theses. 1684.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1684
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Biodiversity Commons, Desert Ecology Commons, Environmental Design Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Horticulture Commons, Landscape Architecture Commons, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences Commons, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Commons, Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons