THE WEST PHILADELPHIA LANDSCAPE PROJECT
The West Philadelphia Landscape Project is a longitudinal, place-based, action research project
dedicated to redesigning and rebuilding the landscape of Mill Creek, an inner-city
neighborhood, in order to accomplish community development and restore ecological and
social systems. Achievements since 1987 include: the design and construction of
community gardens; a new curriculum for an inner-city middle school; a community
database; innovative applications of digital technology; proposals for new water
inffrastructure now being implemented by the City of Philadelphia. WPLP has been
featured in newspaper articles, professional journals, national radio and television
broadcasts, and international conferences and symposia. Since 2000, WPLP has been
based at MIT. For more information, see www.wplp.net.
Captions
1. Vacant land on a buried floodplain in West Philadelphia. Vacant urban land is often seen
as a problem and addressed lot by lot, but vacant lands should be viewed collectively, as a
resource. An important line of inquiry for WPLP, sustained from 1984-2004, explored the
relationship between vacant land, buried floodplains, community development, and
regional water quality. In the late 1980s, WPLP proposed that vacant urban land on the buried
floodplain of Mill Creek be designed and developed as both a neighborhood amenity and a new
infrastructure to reduce combined sewer overflows (CSOs) to the Schuylkill River.
2. The Schuylkill River is polluted by combined sewer overflows (CSOs) from the Mill Creek
and other former streams. In recent years, the Philadelphia Water Department began to
implement WPLP proposals for a new landscape infrastructure to reduce CSOs.
3. From 1996-2001, students at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania designed prototypes
for open space projects on vacant land that combine environmental education and stormwater
detention. Their work, presented on the WPLP Web site as a public resource, helped persuade
neighborhood residents and city officials that these proposals were feasible.
4. Aspen Farms Community Garden is one of dozens of landscape projects designed from
1987-1991 on the buried floodplain of Mill Creek. Design, construction, use, and evaluation
of small-scale prototypes at Aspen Farms demonstrated the potential of larger-scale proposals
and built public support.
5. The original design for Aspen Farms, produced as part of a studio course in fall 1988
and built in spring1989, was expanded and refined repeatedly from 1997-2000. From
1995-2002, WPLP and Aspen Farms were partners in developing and implementing an
urban watershed curriculum for Sulzberger Middle School, which combined local history
and landscape design and planning.
6. The first WPLP Web site went online early in 1996. Since then, the site has hosted a
digital database, designs for new infrastructure projects, the new curriculum for
Sulzberger Middle School, and other resources. MIT students designed a new WPLP
website in 2000 to reinforce the project’s top-down/bottom-up approach to community
development and landscape planning and design. In 2008, a new WPLP Web site launched,
which presents new information, provides fresh ways of accessing WPLP resources, and
introduces the WPLP Network, a forum for WPLP alumni and partners.