Water holds the past and present. Deciphering it´s layers, it mirrors decisions and the way land is acquired. The way current practices respond to water is defensive and results in impervious soils that redirect water somewhere else, destroying resilient networks and causing harm to the ones most vulnerable. These floods are consequences of a white governed property regime that has worked steadily towards the dispossession of people for the sake of western economy. It is undermining people’s intimate relationship to bodies of water; both natural and artificial. Atlanta is a city of water, sourced from ranges of the Appalachian Mountains and occurring rainfall. It sits on the mountain ridge of two watersheds. The land lies on a thick granite foundation, holding rich groundwater reservoirs. Yet Atlanta´s soil contains a lot of hard clay, which makes the infiltration of water difficult. Instead, the water tends to quickly run off to lower grounds. “Tracing roots “acknowledges the presence of water and re-imagines new conditions along sealed grounds in the watershed. Water is multiscale and immeasurable and as such destabilizes conventional planning practices. The diagram on the left shows a series of sections through the Intrenchment Creek Watershed in Atlanta. The existing built environment is marked in white. Water erodes property lines in the sealed soils, marked in gray. The water flow is decentralized, through the increased permeability of vegetation, which creates water sensitive typologies for future generations. Over time, more water is able to be absorbed in place, relieving both low lying areas as well as existing gray infrastructure.
