ABSTRACT 
 
 
 
 
Title of Thesis: WILD TO WILDSCAPE: DESIGNING THE 
URBAN WILD  
  
 Renee LaGue,  
Master of Landscape Architecture, 2017 
  
Thesis Directed By: Dr. Kelly Cook, Landscape Architecture 
 
 
Urban wasteland, terrain vague, postindustrial site, urban wild and wildscape: these are but 
a few of the terms describing sites which have been disturbed by humans and contain novel 
or spontaneous vegetation. In this thesis, I investigate the literature for examples of how 
designers can act upon these sites such that they provide the social, environmental, and 
artistic benefits of being ‘designed’ without destroying existing vegetative wildness and 
historical traces. I organize 35 terms into three categories describing the spaces as either 
negative, empty, or by vegetation type. I find that most design suggestions lie along three 
axes: history, vegetation, and access/interactivity, along with a general principle of ‘minimal 
intervention.’ Finally, I synthesize the literature review and precedents and apply what I have 
found to a test design site, a portion of a former railroad right of way in Alexandria, Virginia.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
WILD TO WILDSCAPE: DESIGNING THE URBAN WILD    
 
 
 
by 
 
 
Renee LaGue 
 
 
 
 
 
Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the  
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of 
Master of Landscape 
Architecture 
2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Committee: 
Dr. Kelly Cook, Chair 
Dr. Lea Johnson 
Dr. Madlen Simon 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Copyright by 
Renee LaGue 
2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ii 
 
Preface & Acknowledgements: Down the Rabbit Hole 
I found the thesis site while visiting a native plant nursery in Alexandria, Virginia 
with my friend Jorah. After we made our purchases and exited the nursery, I spotted a “weird 
ditch” through a gap in the fence. At first, I thought it might have been a former stream 
channel or buried stream, which interested me greatly, but as we followed the ditch, it 
gradually turned into a steep ridge. We were drawn on by the magic of the site– the 
juxtaposition of the blind industrial walls and shuttered loading docks with the backs of 
residential yards, the wild vegetation of a no-man’s-land carved through by a mostly straight 
and well-worn path, a rhythmic sequence of ‘rooms’ defined by former fencelines.  
When we turned around past the hole where we had entered, we crossed a residential 
street, and disappointingly, the space flattened out and transformed into a mowed park of 
shade trees and lawn. The magic had diminished, remaining only in some scrubby fenceline 
black locust trees and the way the linear site cut diagonally through the neighborhood. 
After returning home, I did some initial research on the site, a former railroad right-
of-way. To my great disappointment, I found that a concept design for the wild half had 
already been completed as part of a new development. This concept replaced the wonderful 
wild features with a mowed lawn dotted with ornamental and shade trees in a Picturesque 
fashion. The only nod to site history or the existing scruffy juxtapositions was the re-insertion 
of two instances of the former railroad track. I set out with the goal of creating a design which 
would not ruin the magic I had found. This took me on an odyssey through the literature of 
urban wastelands and railways in landscape architecture, architecture, planning, and ecology.  
 iii 
 
 
Figure 1: Mt. Jefferson Park Concept Design. From Oakville Triangle & Route 1 Corridor Vision Plan 
and Urban Design Standards and Guidelines, City of Alexandria. Public document. 
 
I am deeply thankful to my committee chair, Dr. Kelly Cook, and my committee, Dr. 
Lea Johnson and Dr. Madlen Simon, for their high expectations and for pushing me further in 
my thought and design with every meeting. It was not always easy to be alerted to conceptual 
gaps in the project, but it was always useful. In addition, I want to thank my classmates, 
particularly Jorah and Kaitlin for the pho and camaraderie, and Jorah for suggesting that first 
trip to the native plant nursery. I would also like to thank my parents for their support and my 
boyfriend Jay for his encouragement and helpful suggestions. 
 
 iv 
 
Table of Contents 
Preface & Acknowledgements: Down the Rabbit Hole     ii 
Table of Contents         iv 
List of Tables and Figures        vi 
Chapter 1: Introduction         1 
Chapter 2: Literature Review        6 
Locating Urban Wilds within the Theory of Four Natures    6 
Types of Urban Wild        9 
An Urban Wild by Any Other Name?      12 
Negative Terms         14 
Empty or Ambiguous Terms       15 
Ecological or Nature-Based Terms      16 
Naming the Designed Urban Wild       19 
Social Value and Challenges of Urban Wilds     19 
Ecological Value and Challenges of Urban Wilds     22 
Ecological Value and Challenges of Railway Rights-of-Way   24 
Chapter 3: Site Analysis        27 
Context: The W&OD Railroad and Historic Transportation Networks  27 
Site-Specific History        35 
 1900          35 
 1921          35 
 1959          36 
 2015          37 
 Future          37 
Human Structures and Demographics      44 
 Figure Ground         44 
 Fences          44 
 Access and Circulation        44 
 Demographics         45 
Abiotic Factors         54 
 Soils          54 
 Hydrology         54 
 Elevation and Slope        55 
Biotic Factors         60 
 Green Space Connections and Nearby Habitat     60 
 Vegetation Distribution        61 
Linear Parks: Design Strategies       68 
Summary of Design Directives from Site Analysis     70 
Chapter 4: Wild to Wildscape: Strategies for Designing Urban Wilds   72 
Design through Erasure        73 
Design through Mimicry        74 
Design through Restoration       77 
Design through Conservation       78 
Design through Historic Preservation      79 
Design through Hybridization       80 
 Design through Time and Process      81 
Design through Hybridized Texts      84 
 Hybridization with Productive Nature     84 
 v 
 
 Hybridization with Cultural Nature     85 
Summary of Design Directives from Theory     88 
Chapter 5: Design Methods        90 
Principles for Designing Urban Wilds      90 
Application of Theory of “Smallest Possible Intervention” to Thesis Site  90 
Reconciling Design Directions from Site Analysis and Theory   91 
Additional Design Directives: Incorporating Existing Site Characteristics  92 
 Programming the Site        95 
Concept Development        96 
Chapter 6: Design         101 
Description of Design Section by Section      105 
Boxcar Meadows        105 
Rolling Stock         106 
De-Railing Zone        107 
Fabrication Station        109 
Trestle Heights         110 
Chapter 7: Conclusion         112 
Bibliography          114 
 
 
 
 
 
 vi 
 
List of Tables and Figures 
Figure 1: Mt. Jefferson Park Concept Design      iii 
Table 1: Natures Enumerated        7 
Figure 2: Street Edges and Medians       9 
Figure 3: Vacant Lots, Gaps, Railway Infrastructure, and Brownfields   10 
Figure 4: Waterways, Structural Sites, Microsites, and Power Line Rights of Way 11 
Figure 5: Concept Map Bubble Diagram       13 
Figure 6: Detailed Concept Map of Terms      13 
Figure 7: Guerilla art near abandoned Glen Echo trolley right of way   20 
Figure 8: Potomac Yards, 1916.        28 
Figure 9: The W&OD trestle with the St. Asaph waiting shed at Potomac Yards, 1957 28 
Figure 10: Mail distribution at Bluemont Jct., 1937     29 
Figure 11: Bulldozer pulling ties from Alexandria viaduct, 1969    30 
Figure 12: Pile of ties removed from Alexandria viaduct, 1969    30 
Figure 13: Tracks west of Rte. 1 being removed, 1969     30 
Figure 14: Cutting Rails at Grove Ave., 1969      30 
Figure 15: W&OD Context Entire Railway      32 
Figure 16: W&OD Context Alexandria       33 
Figure 17: Thesis Site         34 
Figure 18: 189- Perspective of Northwest Alexandria with racetrack and railroad  35 
Figure 19: 1922 aerial of Del Ray and Alexandria Jct. with former racetrack site in red. 36 
Figure 20: St. Asaph Racetrack in Alexandria, VA, 1902     36 
Figure 21: St. Asaph Racetrack, 1914       36 
Figure 22: Mt. Jefferson Park Concept Design      38 
Figure 23: 1900 Del Ray and St. Elmo       39 
Figure 24: 1921 Potomac        40 
Figure 25: 1959 Alexandria        41 
Figure 26: 2015 Alexandria        42 
Figure 27: Future Alexandria         43 
Figure 28: Alexandria Population by Age and Sex in 1960 and 2010   45 
Figure 29: Figure-Ground Analysis       48 
Figure 30: Fences and Former Fence Locations      49 
Figure 31: Site Access         50 
Figure 32: Age by Block Group        51 
Figure 33: Population Density        52 
Figure 34: Ethnicity by Block Group       53 
Figure 35: Concrete Vernal Pool       55 
Figure 36: Drainage Structure        55 
Figure 37: Drainage and Storm Sheds       57 
Figure 38: Elevation         58 
Figure 39: Slope Analysis        59 
Figure 40: Tree Species Distribution       62 
Figure 41: Native and Invasive Tree Distribution      63 
Figure 42: Green Space Connectors       65 
Figure 43: Tree Species, Relative Size, and Distribution     66 
Figure 44: Invasive Tree Species, Relative Size, and Distribution    67 
Figure 45: Thin Park Typologies by Karl Kullmann     68 
Figure 46: Design through Erasure       73 
 vii 
 
Figure 47: Design through Mimicry       74 
Figure 48: Design through Restoration       77 
Figure 49: Design through Conservation       78 
Figure 50: Design through Historic Preservation      79 
Figure 51: Design through Hybridization      80 
Figure 52: Images of Südgelände       83 
Figure 53: Images of Duisburg-Nord       87 
Figure 54: Existing site conditions.       93 
Figure 55: Boxcar converted to an electric engine, 193-     93 
Figure 56: Tracks at Purcellville, VA after abandonment, 1968    93 
Figure 57: Concrete pipe & hedge threshold and manipulating vegetation through  94 
    ‘fence mazes’ 
Figure 58: Catenary gate and sculptural chain-link threshold    94 
Figure 59: Paving/de-paving studies and mound field     94 
Figure 60: Drain fountains and design through subtraction on an existing wall  95 
Figure 61: Breakthrough in visualizing the site as a whole    97 
Figure 62: Exploring categories of addition and subtraction on the site   97 
Figure 63: Developing concept of linear ‘stops’ on different ‘tracks’   98 
Figure 64: Refining concept; development of aligned ‘stations’    98 
Figure 65: Initial typology diagram: ‘Stops and Spontaneous Vegetation’   99 
Figure 66: Sketch of more intensive design possibilities for a concrete wall at a   100 
    ‘station’  
Figure 67: Stops and stations aligned conceptually on thesis site    100 
Figure 68: Initial rendered design presented at defense     101 
Figure 69: Presentation graphic of a ‘station’ containing a beer garden and   102 
    bouldering barn. 
Figure 70: Diagram showing location of current fenceline/wall vegetation   103 
 (green), vegetation along former fencelines (dashed green), and  
 vegetation on embankments (yellow-green). 
Figure 71: Sketchbook diagram of experience walking through the southeastern  103 
 Park of site. Not to scale. 
Figure 72: New typology diagram with fencerows of vegetation creating ‘rooms’  103 
 to hold stops, stations, and thickets. 
Figure 73: Revised site plan-entire       104 
Figure 74: Northwest segment of thesis site.      105 
Figure 75: Section through northwest segment of site with boxcar and waiting shed. 105 
Figure 76: Segment of site showing meadow, play boxcars and mounds, and waiting  106 
shed bathroom. 
Figure 77: Section with mowed meadow path and fenceline vegetation.   106 
Figure 78: Segment of site showing wetland, bridge, hammocks, and slides.  107 
Figure 79: Section through site showing wetland and bridge.    107 
Figure 80: Section showing meadow vegetation and hammocks and slides beyond. 108 
Figure 81: Perspective of graffiti wall ‘station.’       108 
Figure 82: Segment of site showing concrete pipe gates, reinstated rail paths, the maker    
shed/fabrication station, and the maker yard     109 
Figure 83: Section through site showing fabrication station, yard, and new development. 110 
Figure 84: Southeastern end of thesis site.      110 
Figure 85: Section through Trestle Heights.      110 
Figure 86: Section-perspective of park entry on southeast end. ADA entrance is to  111 
    the right; viewing sculpture made from rail is atop the hill. 
  1 
 
Chapter 1: Introduction 
There are urban spaces throughout cities around the globe where humans have used and 
then abandoned sites which have then become home to a wide array of spontaneous plants and 
animal species and permit a wide array of human and nonhuman uses. These sites are on the 
margins of the normal order of the city and are often subject to efforts to control or tame them.  
These “urban wastelands” are not often considered to be “natural” or desirable, and often 
their history and unique site characteristics are completely erased or reduced to tokens when they 
are designed by landscape architects. However, if this occurs, the community often loses an 
important link to its past, wild species lose their homes, and people lose a space where they can 
participate in a wide range of user-generated and spontaneous activities. This thesis investigates 
the question of how to design these spaces in order to retain their positive wild aspects while also 
reaping the environmental, social, and artistic benefits of design. To address this problem, I 
investigate the literature and precedents, distill important design directives, come up with an 
approach, apply the design to a test site, and reflect on the process. 
An “urban wild” is an urban green space with a history of strong, intentional 
anthropogenic disturbance, altered soils, and which is covered at least partly with spontaneous 
communities of vegetation. These sites may contain remnants or scars of human use in the form 
of highly-altered substrates or built structures. Vegetation communities may be left entirely to 
their own devices or may be subject to occasional human intervention.  
Not all green spaces within cities are urban wilds. For example, golf courses, lawns, 
home gardens, agricultural areas, and public parks are spaces with clear uses, rules, and programs 
that are actively maintained and controlled by humans. Remnant urban habitats (for example, 
wooded stream valleys) are also not considered to be urban wilds. While these communities may 
contain some spontaneous plants and may be degraded by urban processes around them, they 
have not been intentionally altered to the same extent. Remnant urban forests grow on substrates 
  2 
 
and contain species compositions which are much closer to those found in undisturbed plant 
communities, and these spaces are commonly viewed as ‘natural,’ as opposed to the ‘unnatural 
nature’ of urban wilds. 
In these urban wild sites, “normal forces of order, control, and management have been 
abandoned and do not shape how we view or occupy them”1. These spaces are “between or on the 
margins of more programmed and controlled urban spaces,”2 outside of our typical 
conceptualization of nature, and resist “notions of proper or appropriate use”.3 These wild spaces 
are not controlled by a single entity such as a parks department or friends group and thus allow 
multiple actors (human, animal, vegetative, or otherwise) to become shared authors of a site over 
time. 
 Urban planning as a field attempts to place rational, orderly regulations on the use of land 
and space; consequently, urban wilds– unregulated, abandoned, and/or forgotten– are particularly 
troubling to planners, who often conceptualize them as ‘empty’ or ‘vacant,’ when in fact they are 
anything but.4 These sites are today’s ‘wastelands’ often seen as valueless and in need of 
redevelopment.  
While urban wilds already contain many positive qualities and may not need to be 
designed, it may also be politically, socially, or ecologically advantageous to design these spaces 
for a variety of reasons. Because of the mixed or negative aesthetic perception of urban wilds and 
this conceptualization as being empty, these spaces are in danger of being lost. Rupprecht and 
Byrne suggest that “ambiguity, informality, and malleability…leave informal urban green spaces 
vulnerable to being contested politically, legally, and aesthetically.”5 In fact, the disapproval of 
one group of residents (particularly politically powerful ones) may lead to the removal or 
                                                      
1 Sheridan, “Disordering Public Space: Urban Wildscape Processes in Practice.” 
2 Jorgensen and Licka, “Anti-Planning, Anti-Design?” 
3 Di Palma, Wasteland, 3. 
4 Doron, “The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression.” 
5 Rupprecht and Byrne, “Informal Urban Green Space: A Typology and Trilingual Systematic Review of 
Its Role for Urban Residents and Trends in the Literature.” 
  3 
 
‘improvement’ of urban wilds, which may deny other groups of residents valued opportunities.6 
These spaces may not be accepted or deemed safe by the community unless some amount of 
‘cues to care’ in the form of maintenance (mowing, trimming vegetation, removing litter) or 
design are shown.7  
 Additionally, these spaces may be simply inaccessible to some human users, particularly 
those with disabilities, or if the access points are covered in thick vegetation. Some restriction of 
human access may be desired in the case of sensitive habitats, but if human access is permitted, it 
is important to allow all users to have similar experiences. Design can assist in accessibility to 
urban wild sites.  
 These spaces may contain ecological challenges due to being heavily affected by humans, 
and these may need to be addressed. Invasive vegetation may be pushing out other species, 
causing ecological imbalance. Hydrology may be impacted by surrounding urban development 
and waterways may be impaired or severely eroded. The soil may be highly toxic or 
contaminated. All of these situations can be stabilized or brought into balance through the work 
of landscape architects. 
 As Chan suggests, it may also be economically impractical to suggest that sites, 
particularly those with extensive post-industrial ruins, remain as they are. She states, 
“Commodification of industrial ruins suits contemporary culture and economies. Communities 
want improvements beyond, not necessarily reminders of, toxic histories. … In most cities, 
recreational opportunities are seen as a more immediate need than historical narratives.”8 Thus, 
design has a role to play on urban wild sites, and good design can retain essential wild elements 
while improving ecological aspects and creating greater public acceptance. 
Urban wilds are found in cities around the globe, although few studies have focused on 
quantifying how much area they cover, and estimates vary along with the definitions used. For 
                                                      
6 Ibid. 
7 Nassauer, “Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames.” 
8 Chan, “What Roles For Ruins?” 
  4 
 
example, Bowman and Pagano found in 1998 that US cities contained an average of 15.4% 
vacant land, but their definition included all unbuilt land such as wetlands, sloped lands, and 
undeveloped parcels and did not include “derelict land” or brownfields;9 thus this is not a good 
proxy for the percentage of urban wild land in cities. A study of US brownfields in 1998 
estimated that between 5% and 10% of urban land was brownfield, with higher percentages in the 
Northeast and Midwest.10 However, not all urban wilds meet the strict definition of a brownfield, 
and not all brownfields are spontaneously vegetated; thus this number is also not a good estimate. 
A 2014 study of urban unmaintained green space found that this type covered 6.3% of the 
area of Brisbane, Australia and 4.8% of Sapporo, Japan11. In the United States, around 9.5% of 
the land in Somerville, Massachusetts has been calculated to be unmaintained and covered by 
spontaneous vegetation—a number that exceeds the land area occupied by maintained parks.12 
These numbers are better estimates of the percent cover of this type of urban wild land in cities, 
but additional studies would allow these numbers to be generalized and clarify regional trends or 
patterns. In the United States, such sites can be often linked to the process of deindustrialization, 
with the loss of factories and jobs leading to a decline in the number of residents and proliferation 
of vacant buildings and empty lots. For example, in postindustrial Detroit, approximately 40% of 
the land has been abandoned.13  
The existence and quantity of vacant, spontaneously vegetated land in cities poses both a 
challenge and an opportunity for landscape architects, as these sites contain particular assets 
along with very real social, environmental, and economic problems which need to be addressed. 
In deindustrializing cities, these spaces will likely only become more prevalent in the urban fabric 
and must be dealt with in a manner that respects the realities of the surrounding community and a 
                                                      
9 Bowman and Pagano, Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies. 
10 Simons, “How Many Urban Brownfields Are Out There?” 
11 Rupprecht and Byrne, “Informal Urban Green Space: Comparison of Quantity and Characteristics in 
Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan.” 
12 Tredici, “The Flora of the Future.” 
13 Ibid., 2. 
  5 
 
small maintenance budget. In growing cities, on the other hand, it may be important to preserve 
these spaces from development as an alternative to tightly controlled parks and the built realm. 
A wide array of terms, each with a slightly different meaning, are currently used in the 
literature to refer to this type of site. Some of these terms contain important distinctions in 
meaning within fields of study, but the current proliferation is unnecessary and confusing for 
those working in and interacting with the topic, as it becomes very difficult to find and keep up 
with prior and related work. Short of an exhaustive search of terms, work in a variety of related 
fields goes unrecognized and unexamined. Landscape architects and others would do well to 
thoroughly examine and use existing terms for this type of site before coining catchy neologisms. 
 To address this problem, I collected terms for these sites and classified them into three 
major categories: terms which refer to these sites in a primarily negative manner, terms which 
refer to the empty or ambiguous nature of these sites, and terms which refer to the nature or 
ecosystem type which occupy these sites. In chapter two, I discuss these terms and, through a 
process of elimination, choose terms to use for designed and undesigned urban wilds. I also 
investigate the literature in terms of the social and ecological benefits and challenges of urban 
wild sites in general and railroad right of ways in particular. 
Creating design solutions which retain and hybridize wild and historic aspects of these 
sites will allow them to reap the benefits of being designed while also providing more diverse 
habitats, a space where humans can interact with nonhuman processes, and continuity with site 
history. To realize this goal, in chapter four, I collect the critical literature on the topic, synthesize 
it, and use it to categorize a selection of landscape projects, which incorporate varying levels of 
history, vegetative wildness, and freedom of access and interactivity.  
In chapter five, I create a list of design directions I will be taking from the research, go 
through a process of concept development, and show how I will apply the theory to a test case, a 
portion of a former railroad right of way. I discuss the design in chapter six and reflect on the 
process and product in chapter seven.
  6 
 
Chapter 2: Literature Review 
Locating Urban Wilds within the Theory of Four Natures 
Many attempts at defining nature within landscape architecture have been based on the 
theory of four natures. This idea has been a presence in landscape theory since Cicero described 
first and second nature in 45 BCE. In the 1500s, the Italian humanists Taegio and Bonfadio 
introduced the idea of third nature, according to landscape historian John Dixon Hunt.14 This 
theory has been persistent: Dixon Hunt describes how the “visual formulations of the ideas of 
three natures changed, sometimes radically” in its implementation in the landscape “but its 
conceptual basis survived intact” throughout the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s in garden design 
(42). Its usefulness as a theory survives to the present day.  
In 1991, Ingo Kowarik coined the term “Natur der Vierten Art,” or “nature of the fourth 
kind”, adding to the typology. Kowarik, an urban ecologist from Berlin, has inherited a long 
tradition of research on wild urban sites. After WWII, German botanists studied bombed-out 
rubble sites in Berlin and other cities. While they did not consider themselves “urban ecologists,” 
they were the first to “systematically extend the practice of ecological fieldwork to the urban 
environment”.15 Thus, Kowarik was uniquely situated to combine the existing landscape theory of 
three natures with his awareness of a new kind of nature. 
 The theory of four natures, while not scientific, corresponds well with novel ecosystem 
theory in ecology. In 2009, Hobbs described ecosystems as being historical, hybrid, or novel.16 
The historic state of an ecosystem corresponds with first nature. A novel ecosystem corresponds 
with fourth nature. Hobbs also includes another category with “hybrid” or “impacted” ecosystems 
which exist between first and fourth nature. Recently, several ecologists proposed an additional 
category of designed ecosystem to the typology, which corresponds with second and third 
                                                      
14 Hunt, Greater Perfections. 
15 Lachmund, “Exploring the City of Rubble.” 
16 Hobbs, Higgs, and Harris, “Novel Ecosystems.” 
  7 
 
nature.17 While the debate in the field of ecology is ongoing and ecologists are attempting to more 
clearly define these categories, the recognition of a type of unique ‘fourth nature’ exists across 
disciplinary boundaries. This thesis will investigate one type of ‘fourth nature’ or urban 
wasteland, a disused railroad right of way. 
 
Table 1: Natures Enumerated 
First Nature The “original” nature, which includes pristine ecosystems and remnants 
thereof. Some define first nature strictly as wilderness, and others argue 
that because of global human impacts, it no longer exists18. 
Second 
Nature 
The cultivated landscape of traditional or modern agriculture or forestry 
practices (meadows, pastures, crop fields, hedgerows, coppices, etc.). 
Some ecologists include green infrastructure such as rain gardens or 
bioretention.19 
Third Nature The garden or park, containing an idealized version of first and second 
nature and maintained by humans. It includes street trees and other trees 
and vegetation planted to define and beautify spaces. 
Fourth Nature Wild first nature (ruderal or spontaneous plants) colonizing and re-
inhabiting abandoned cultural landscapes including buildings. It occurs 
without horticultural planning, design, or maintenance by humans. 
 
It is important to remember that while categorization can promote understanding, in 
reality there is a “sliding scale of cultural intervention in the natural world” (63)20. The Swedish 
historian of technology Arne Kaijser responded to William Cronon’s ideas of first and second 
nature by suggesting that “the idea of ‘second nature’ may not go far enough… since human 
constructs of nature are multilayered and based on generations and generations of people 
interacting with nature.”21 Categorizations have both drawbacks and advantages, and it is 
important to remember that they are an imperfect representation of a complicated reality. 
                                                      
17 Morse et al., “Novel Ecosystems in the Anthropocene.” 
18 Jorgensen and Tylecote, “Ambivalent Landscapes.” 
19 Higgs, “Novel and Designed Ecosystems.” 
20 Hunt, Greater Perfections. 
21 Williams, “Understanding the Place of Humans in Nature.” 
  8 
 
Kowarik suggests that, while the theory of four natures is not scientific, this method of 
categorization is beneficial. He states that it “reduces the existing diversity of very different, 
culturally varying forms of nature that are found within the impact area of cities down to four 
types and thereby emphasizes their respective ‘characters.’” This allows the general public and 
local stakeholders, who are most likely not well-versed in science, to understand the concepts. 
Without this knowledge, the public may misunderstand these urban spaces, “not realize their 
“significant qualitative differences,” and make poor decisions based on preconceived notions.22  
In the United States, preconceived notions are likely to fall in line with a long tradition of 
dualistic thinking about nature and wilderness. Often, wilderness is glorified as “the natural, 
unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul,”23 and areas touched by 
humans (particularly urban areas) are not considered to be a part of nature. As William Cronon 
puts it, “Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which 
we actually live, the landscape that for better or worse we call home.” Our cultural training often 
leads us to overlook the value of urban landscapes. 
Kowarik addresses this tension, “almost universally felt by anyone working in natural 
systems, regarding whether and how humans fit into our definitions of ‘natural’ areas.”24 He 
makes a case for these types of sites, stating that a second goal with the four natures approach is 
to “convey, through a simple distinction, that a fundamental equivalence of values exists among 
the four different nature types.” Hunt concurs, emphasizing that the theory doesn’t privilege any 
one nature over the others (35).25 This allows landscapes that may have not been previously 
valued to be recognized as valuable.26 Urban wilds act as natural areas for large numbers of 
people and are home to many species. Can the value of the fourth nature on these sites be better 
communicated? If so, this might be an answer to Cronon’s question, “How can we take the 
                                                      
22 Kowarik, Ingo, “Wild Urban Woodlands: Towards a Conceptual Framework.” 
23 Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness;, or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” 
24 Riemann, “Ingo Kowarik and Stefan Körner (Eds), Wild Urban Woodlands.” 
25 Hunt, Greater Perfections. 
26 Kowarik, Ingo, “Wild Urban Woodlands: Towards a Conceptual Framework.” 
  9 
 
positive values we associate with wilderness and bring them closer to home?” Through the design 
process, this thesis intends to bring the positive aspects of a smaller scale wildness to urban areas. 
 
Types of Urban Wild  
Urban wastelands or ‘fourth nature’ sites come in many shapes and sizes. Urban 
ecologists study the widest array of sites, including cracks, walls, gaps, and microsites. Within the 
fields of landscape architecture, planning, architecture, and geography, practitioners focus on 
urban wilds large enough to be experienced as spaces or places by humans, such as vacant lots or 
brownfields. 
There have been several attempts to create a typology of liminal green spaces in cities. 
Peter Del Tredici, a botanist, discusses a list of ‘new infrastructural taxonomies’, or distinctive 
habitats of spontaneous vegetation in urban areas including the chain-link fence, vacant lots, 
median strips, stone walls, pavement cracks, specialized microclimates, and rail and river 
corridors27. Rupprecht and Byrne generalize this list in their typology of “ambiguous, liminal 
vegetated spaces,” 28. Each of the following types has a characteristic size, shape, and substrate. 
 
Street Edges and Medians: These are vegetated areas on 
the edges of roads and highways. They are maintained 
regularly to prevent high and dense vegetation growth 
aside from street trees, are small and linear in size, and 
have a substrate of soil, gravel, stone, concrete, or asphalt. 
                                                      
27 Tredici, “The Flora of the Future.” 
28 Rupprecht and Byrne, “Informal Urban Green-Space.” 
Figure 2: Street Edges and Medians. 
Author. 
  10 
 
Vacant Lots: These were formerly used for residential or 
commercial purposes and may contain derelict structures. 
Vegetation removal is irregular at medium to long intervals 
and they are small or medium in size with a substrate of 
soil, gravel, or bricks. 
 
Gaps: These exist as vegetated areas between two walls or 
fences. Vegetation removal is irregular and variable and 
they are small and linear with a substrate of soil or gravel. 
 
Railway Infrastructure: Includes tracks, vegetated edges, 
stations, and rail yards. Tracks are herbicided to prevent 
vegetation growth, but vegetation further from tracks is less 
frequently maintained. Substrates are soil, gravel, or stone. 
 
Brownfields: Brownfields include landfills, abandoned 
factories, and closed industrial parks formerly used for 
industrial or commercial purposes but not currently in use. 
Vegetation removal is absent or infrequent and they are 
medium to large with a substrate of soil, gravel, concrete, 
or asphalt. 
Figure 3: Vacant Lots, Gaps, Railway 
Infrastructure, and Brownfields. Author. 
  11 
 
Waterways: These are vegetated areas adjacent to or 
within water infrastructures, either natural or channelized. 
Irregular vegetation removal improves flood protection or 
structures. They have a substrate of soil, stone, concrete, or 
bricks. 
 
Structural Sites: Includes overgrown structures such as 
walls, fences, roofs, and buildings. Vegetation can be 
removed irregularly to maintain structural integrity or not 
at all. Substrates can be soil, stone, gravel, wood, concrete, 
or metal. 
 
Microsites: This category includes vegetation in small 
cracks and holes, particularly on otherwise paved or 
impervious surfaces. Management varies. These sites are 
very small and substrates include soil, stone, and concrete. 
 
Power Line Rights of Way: This category includes 
vegetated corridors running under power lines. Vegetation 
is managed regularly in a central corridor to prevent high 
growth while vegetation on the edges of the corridor is 
maintained rarely or not at all. Substrates are soil. 
 
 
  
Figure 4: Waterways, Structural Sites, 
Microsites, and Power Line Rights of 
Way. Author. 
  12 
 
An Urban Wild by Any Other Name? 
There are a myriad of terms used to refer to liminal, spontaneously-vegetated urban sites 
within cities because the concepts are relatively new and span the fields of ecology, landscape 
architecture, planning, urban geography, and architecture. I discuss and untangle these terms, 
each of which has a slightly different connotation and history of use. As my thesis site, an 
abandoned railroad right-of-way, is one type of urban wild, this has allowed me to choose the best 
term to discuss its place in the urban matrix. 
I generated the list in this section by first keeping notes on which terms I encountered and 
their sources in order to better search through the literature. Once I had discovered a significant 
number, I realized that it would be helpful to undertake a concerted effort to find as many as 
possible. I found additional terms by investigating citations and earlier sources, by searching the 
web, and through broad reading on the topic in books and articles. As I was assembling this list, I 
began to realize that all but two of the terms can be sorted into three categories.  
These three categories include spaces defined by their emptiness or ambiguity, spaces 
defined negatively, and spaces defined by the occupying nature or ecosystem type. A subcategory 
of the latter is ‘natures enumerated’, which, unlike the other terms, are not a simple attempt to 
name these spaces but are part of a larger theoretical attempt to categorize nature within 
landscapes and will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter. See the following concept 
maps for a categorization of terms and the fields in which they are commonly used. 
 
  13 
 
 
Figure 5: Concept Map Bubble Diagram 
 
Figure 6: Detailed Concept Map of Terms 
  14 
 
Negative Terms  
Wasteland, a term which first originated in English in the thirteenth century, is the best 
known of the negative terms. While originally the term denoted a barren or unproductive natural 
landscape, such as a desert, it is now often applied to these types of urban sites that have been 
heavily affected by human activity. In both cases, according to Di Palma, “wasteland is a 
landscape that resists notions of appropriate use.”29 Other negative terms include dead space,30 
derelict landscapes,31 dead zones,32 superfluous landscapes,33 disturbed space, and TOADS 
(temporarily obsolete, abandoned, or derelict sites).34 Terms that overlap the empty or ambiguous 
category include lost space35 and vacant land.36 These terms are typically older than those in the 
other two categories and were particularly used in the 1980s and 90s in the fields of architecture, 
planning, and urban geography to discuss the phenomenon of the “dying inner city” and 
corresponding ‘wasted’ space. Coleman wrote Dead Space in the Dying Inner City in 1982; 
Derelict Landscapes: the Wasting of America’s Built Environment was published in 1992; and 
Trancik’s 1989 problem of lost space addresses the question of how to regain a public realm in 
“our shattered cities.”37 The most recent work coining a term in this category is Nielsen’s highly 
theoretical 2002 discussion of superfluous landscapes. In his 2015 thesis, Stuart Chan points out 
that these terms can be considered modernist as opposed to the terms in the next category, which 
are postmodern. The modernist approach claims a right and wrong way of intervening on a site, 
while postmodern terms “favor an iterative and inclusive process, which gathers a deep reading of 
the context” of a site, including historical, cultural, and political sentiments.38 
                                                      
29 Di Palma, Wasteland. 
30 Coleman, “Dead Space in the Dying Inner City.” 
31 Jakle and Wilson, Derelict Landscapes. 
32 Doron, “The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression.” 
33 Nielsen, “The Return of the Excessive Superfluous Landscapes.” 
34 Bowman and Pagano, Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies. 
35 Trancik, Finding Lost Space. 
36 Bowman and Pagano, Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies. 
37 Trancik, Finding Lost Space. 
38 Chan, “Dilemmas and Delights of Designing with Terrain Vague and Postmodern Concepts,” 85–86. 
  15 
 
Doron suggested that while these terms had been popular in planning and architecture 
discourse, “there has been little genuine examination of these places; the consequences of 
labeling these places with the terms above are usually concealed” and asks whether these terms 
adequately describe these places. I would argue that they do not. This category of terms 
emphasizes the “unproductive” and “useless” nature of these sites, but as we will see later, these 
sites are actually often quite productive in terms of plant biomass, animal habitats, ecosystem 
services, and serve diverse human social needs.  
Empty or Ambiguous Terms 
A second category of terms defines these spaces by their in-betweenness, what they lack, 
or by previous (but not current) uses. These terms include edgeland, interim space and interstitial 
landscape;39 urban void;40 post-industrial;41 accidental landscape;42 loose space;43 vague site;44 
no-analog community;45 and indeterminate space.46 Terrain vague is the most well-known term 
in this group and was used by Ignasi de Solá-Morales in his formative 1995 essay of the same 
name.47 Morales writes that, “It is impossible to capture in a single English word or phrase the 
meaning of terrain vague.” He states that terrain connotes a more urban quality than the English 
land, and that in French, vague has the triple meaning of “wave,” “vacant,” and “vague.” Because 
terrain vague contains within it a “multitude of possible connotations,” the argument goes that it 
is well suited “as a collective term for various types of leftover land.”48 Be that as it may, it is 
unlikely that most English readers will pick up on the subtlety in the French meanings of the 
                                                      
39 Gandy, “Marginalia.” 
40 Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty.” 
41 Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society; 
42 Millington, “From Urban Scar to ‘Park in the Sky.’” 
43 Franck and Stevens, Loose Space. 
44 Kullmann, “The Usefulness of Uselessness.” 
45 Williams and Jackson, “Novel Climates, No-Analog Communities, and Ecological Surprises.” 
46 Groth and Corijn, “Reclaiming Urbanity.” 
47 de Solá-Morales, “Terrain Vague.” 
48 Barron and Mariani, Terrain Vague, 6. 
  16 
 
words and defining these spaces as vacant or vague again discounts the life and activity that they 
currently support. 
These sites are real physical locations, actual landscapes to be seen, heard, smelled, and 
felt. Conceptualizing these spaces as empty and containing nothing of current value may in fact 
lead the way to their clearing and destruction. Additionally, there is evidence that their 
conceptualization as marginal or transitory spaces in urban planning discourse may be the source 
of their liminal quality. To both animal residents of these sites and human residents of nearby 
areas, these spaces are not empty and in fact contain qualities missing in managed, functional 
landscapes. It would be a mistake to define these spaces only as gaps in an otherwise complete 
urban fabric. 
Ecological or Nature-Based Terms 
A third category defines spaces by the occupying nature or ecosystem type. These terms 
derive mainly from the fields of ecology and landscape architecture and include novel 
ecosystem,49 ruderal site,50 emerging ecosystem,51 urban wild,52 wildscape,53 freakology,54 
degraded ecosystem,55 informal urban green space,56 fourth nature,57 second nature,58 and third 
landscape.59 Degraded ecosystem is a negative term and as such, can be removed from 
consideration. The author who coined the term freakology attempts to put a positive spin on the 
impaired Los Angeles river by pointing out that, “if freakish, the river is a living ecology… this is 
                                                      
49 Hobbs, Higgs, and Harris, “Novel Ecosystems.” 
50 Lachmund, “Exploring the City of Rubble.” 
51 Milton, “‘Emerging Ecosystems’ -- a Washing-Stone for Ecologists, Economists and Sociologists?” 
52 “Urban Wilds Initiative | Boston.Gov.” 
53 Jorgensen and Keenan, Urban Wildscapes. 
54 Fletcher, “Flood Control Freakology: Los Angeles River Watershed.” 
55 Mascaro et al., “Origins of the Novel Ecosystems Concept.” 
56 Rupprecht and Byrne, “Informal Urban Green Space: Comparison of Quantity and Characteristics in 
Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan.” 
57 Kowarik, “Unkraut Oder Urwald?” 
58 Geuze, “Topos.” 
59 Clement, “The Planetary Garden” and Other Writings. 
  17 
 
an infrastructural ecology, opportunistic and emergent, that lives off human excess”.60 This 
attempt to put a positive spin on this new ecology while reclaiming the word freak is likely to be 
misunderstood by those simply reading the term, and as it is only used by one author in one essay, 
will be removed from consideration as well. 
The most common term in this group, novel ecosystem,61 comes from ecology and refers 
to an ecosystem existing in a highly-altered state. To be called a novel ecosystem, a community 
of vegetation must meet specific and technical criteria which are currently being debated. The 
value and validity of the concept itself is also under debate. In any case, this definition is too 
technical and precise to be used as a general term for these spaces. 
Ruderal site and emerging ecosystem are two more ecological terms that are used much 
less frequently and are not common outside of ecology. Emerging ecosystem was an early 
synonym for novel ecosystem; the latter term appears to have won out. Ruderal site comes from 
the Latin rudus, for rubble. A ruderal plant is one that is early to colonize disturbed lands, and a 
ruderal site is a disturbed site containing ruderal vegetation.  
Fourth nature, second nature, and third landscape are also not poor terms, but they are 
not evocative by themselves of any type of landscape. Out of the context of the theory of natures 
enumerated, they immediately provoke the questions, ‘are there other numerical natures? What do 
they mean?’ Rupprecht and Byrne attempted to solve the nomenclature dilemma by coining the 
term “informal urban greenspace,” or IGS for short.62 While this suits their academic audience, it 
is an unwieldy term that requires the consistent use of an acronym and again, does not describe 
the spaces in a concise, evocative manner. 
Urban wilds and wildscapes are two terms that are not negative, define the space by what 
is there, are evocative, are not technical, and are relatively clear upon first encounter. In addition, 
                                                      
60 Fletcher, “Flood Control Freakology: Los Angeles River Watershed.” 
61 Hobbs, Higgs, and Harris, “Novel Ecosystems.” 
62 Rupprecht and Byrne, “Informal Urban Green Space: Comparison of Quantity and Characteristics in 
Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan.” 
  18 
 
the use of the term wild makes it clear that these spaces are not under direct human control while 
sidestepping the American preoccupation with wildernesses that are “untouched by humans.” The 
term also addresses the issue wherein wildernesses are presumed to be large, as wild spaces can 
exist at almost any scale. 
The term urban wild is in use in the United States, particularly in the city of Boston as an 
identifier of wild sites located within the urban matrix. The term originated in 1976 with a report 
titled Boston's Urban Wilds: A Natural Area Conservation Program; the program is now called 
the Boston Urban Wilds Initiative.63 While the city website describes these sites as remnant 
habitats, in actuality they include former landfills, quarries, dumping grounds, and brownfields.64 
According to Jill Desimini, landscape architect at Harvard University, the definition of an urban 
wild has changed over time. She says, “‘Urban wilds are not parks or wilderness,’ but something 
in between. Urban wilds are ‘unorganized scraps of nature,’ celebrated for their ‘indigenous 
qualities,’” a “living story of urban ecology and abandonment.”65  
The term Urban wildscapes has much shorter history of use in Europe, particularly as the 
title of Jorgensen and Keenan’s 2011 collection of essays, Urban Wildscapes 66 The term 
originated from a conference at Sheffield University in 2007.67 In the United States, the term 
wildscape can be confused with a landscaping practice intended to benefit wildlife or a site 
containing this sort of landscaping. While neither urban wild or urban wildscape are perfect 
terms and both can be confused with other types of urban spaces or practices, I have chosen 
urban wild to use in this thesis for existing urban space with a history of human alteration, 
disturbed soils, and a cover of spontaneous vegetation. 
 
 
                                                      
63 “Urban Wilds Initiative | Boston.Gov.” 
64 Ibid. 
65 Green, “Boston’s Evolving Urban Wilds.” 
66 Jorgensen and Keenan, Urban Wildscapes. 
67 Ibid. 
  19 
 
Naming the Designed Urban Wild 
 To my knowledge, there has been little work on developing a nomenclature of designed 
urban wilds, perhaps not surprisingly due to the lack of consensus on a name for the phenomenon 
in general and a lack of research on how design acts on these sites. Jill Desimini has proposed 
two new additions to the theory of natures enumerated: fifth and sixth nature, which consist of 
fourth nature hybridized with different types of human use.68 Heatherington explores intervention 
strategies on urban wilds in terms of narratives, with categories named “symbols: narrative,” 
“process as framework,” and “extended relationships: intertextuality.”69 Two ecologists have 
suggested four  “conservation actions of the Anthropocene,”70 which reinforce Desimini’s 
additions, for example “Novel + designed + conservation.” I will discuss these concepts in detail 
in chapter four, but first I will choose a term to refer to the category of designed urban wilds as a 
whole.  
While designed urban wilds is clear, is there a better term? The terms listed in the 
previous paragraph refer to individual categories of designed urban wilds, and they suffer from 
the same problems as the terms discussed previously– they are vague and not evocative of the 
physical sites. I propose the term urban wildscape, which clearly shares a root with urban wild, 
plus the addition of scape, with its connotation of human action. I define an urban wildscape as a 
landscape that was once an urban wild that has been intentionally altered by human design and 
retains essential historic and wild characteristics.  
 
Social Value and Challenges of Urban Wilds 
Urban wilds serve many important social functions. Unlike most other urban public 
space, urban wild spaces are non-prescriptive. People are free to do as they choose, and these 
                                                      
68 Desimini, Jill, “Notions of Nature and a Model for Managed Urban Wilds.” 
69 Heatherington, “Buried Narratives.” 
70 Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury, “Reconciling Conflicting Perspectives for Biodiversity Conservation in the 
Anthropocene.” 
  20 
 
spaces fill a multiplicity of roles for different people. Because there are few or no rules or social 
conventions about what is acceptable in these spaces, people become active contributors to the 
landscape and are engaged in ways that would not be possible in other types of landscapes.  
Urban wilds provide recreational value, improve daily life by adding urban green space, 
and can also provide emotional and mental health benefits, as shown by many new studies on the 
value of green spaces in general. Because they are unregimented and contain wild aspects, these 
spaces may also be able to offer the possibility of a psychological transition, or a liminal 
experience that may be otherwise difficult to find in a highly-regimented urban space.71  
 Urban wilds can be particularly important as play spaces for children, as they provide a 
chance for discovery and the challenge of ‘secret nature.’ Children have their own needs, seem to 
accept and use urban wilds willingly, and may perceive their environment differently from 
adults.72 Other under-represented groups are also mentioned as frequent users of these spaces, 
including minorities, migrants, and homeless people.73 While many people use urban wilds, the 
fact that many frequent visitors have limited or no political power means that their voices will not 
be taken into account in designing or changing these spaces. 
                                                      
71 Jorgensen and Tylecote, “Ambivalent Landscapes,” 456. 
72 Rupprecht and Byrne, “Informal Urban Green Space: A Typology and Trilingual Systematic Review of 
Its Role for Urban Residents and Trends in the Literature.” 
73 Ibid. 
Figure 7: Guerilla art near abandoned Glen Echo trolley right of way, Washington D.C. Author. 
  21 
 
Aesthetic or romantic engagements with urban wastelands may universalize these spaces 
and “ignore the sorts of violence that they signify for communities often forced to live in their 
shadows”.74 Millington suggests that, “by focusing on urban wastelands as sites of spontaneity 
and possibility, there is the potential to ignore the communities who lack the resources to find 
solace in the accidental landscapes that surround them”.75 Context matters, as does class, culture, 
geography, and gender. There are deep cultural ties between fears of ecological unruliness and 
violent crime in urban parks, which need to be taken into account when studying these spaces. 
“Urban abandonment can be liberatory and subversive, but it can also be repressive, tangling 
together expressive weeds with violence, neglect, and declining safety”.76 For working class 
people, these disused spaces may be seen in terms of their possible or previous economic 
productivity, daily reminders of livelihoods which may have disappeared.  
The needs and fears of the surrounding community thus must be taken into account when 
designing an urban wild. As Renee de Wall and Arjen de Wit suggest,  
[Urban wild space] is most valuable when it is a contrast to neater, safer, and more 
structured surroundings. Urban wild[s] are a relief in the dense network of civilization, 
which makes them— on a small scale— acceptable and exciting. On a regional scale, 
however, the case of Lusatia demonstrates that it is unacceptable for a regional landscape 
to be unsafe and without use or economic value.77 
A hard-hit community full of vacant lots may appreciate a highly-designed park with 
high maintenance levels signifying care, while a tightly regimented urban or suburban area may 
need more loose space in which residents can experience complexity and escape the “bland, 
sanitized landscapes that are now the mainstay of so much urban development”.78 While the 
thesis site is located in a neighborhood which was formerly working-class, it is now gentrifying 
rapidly and is surrounded by a densely developed matrix of small homes and duplexes, and by 
new townhome development in the site of the former rail yard across Rt. 1. This site is one of the 
                                                      
74 Millington, “From Urban Scar to ‘Park in the Sky.’” 
75 Ibid. 
76 Ibid. 
77 de Waal and de Wit, “Brown Coal, Blue Paradise.” 
78 Jorgensen and Tylecote, “Ambivalent Landscapes.” 
  22 
 
few wild spaces remaining from the former industrial use of this area and is well-suited for a 
hybrid urban wild park. 
People’s relationship with urban wilds is complex and sometimes contradictory. 
Spontaneous vegetation or overgrown infrastructure can be seen to be an empowering marker of a 
resilient ecology or it can be seen as ugly, a marker of decay and decline, and in need of ‘cleaning 
up’. Additionally, the very freedom that allows some groups flexibility can prevent other groups 
from using an area because of fears of drugs and criminal activity.79 
 
Ecological Value and Challenges of Urban Wilds 
Urban wilds are often considered to have negative economic and social value, but they 
provide many ecosystem services. For example, brownfield land in Great Britain is estimated to 
support 12-15% of nationally scarce and rare invertebrates.80 A review paper found that research 
on this topic has focused on three main areas: conservation value, biodiversity, and non-native 
species.  
In terms of conservation value, researchers reported high numbers of species, sometimes 
including rare species.81 Spontaneously vegetated sites showed higher levels of habitat provision 
as compared to lawn and remnant forests for plant species and invertebrate diversity. The volume 
of invertebrates caught at spontaneously vegetated sites in one study was higher than in remnant 
forest and lawns combined. Spontaneously vegetated sites also have the potential to provide 
equivalent microclimate regulation through reflection and evapotranspirative cooling as lawns 
and remnant forests.82 
A wide variety of factors were found to influence biodiversity. Spontaneously vegetated 
sites may support higher trophic organisms due to a diversity of plant species, lack of 
                                                      
79 Ibid. 
80 Robinson and Lundholm, “Ecosystem Services Provided by Urban Spontaneous Vegetation.” 
81 Rupprecht et al., “Informal Urban Green Space: A Trilingual Systematic Review of Its Role for 
Biodiversity and Trends in the Literature.” 
82 Robinson and Lundholm, “Ecosystem Services Provided by Urban Spontaneous Vegetation.” 
  23 
 
maintenance, and greater light availability.83 In particular, frequent maintenance (mowing or 
spraying) reduces vegetation structure and complexity, reducing the amount of food and shelter a 
site can provide.84 However, some species, including rare species, depend on that management. 
Optimal disturbance return intervals of 3-7 years,85 10-15 years,86 and 4-13 years87 were 
suggested in order to maximize habitat and floristic diversity; however habitat diversity should 
not be used alone as a goal.  
Many researchers reported high numbers of non-native species. Some reported that 
invasive species were dominant, while others found little evidence for competition. Naturalized 
species may increase urban biodiversity and provide ecosystem services, and may also be used to 
trace historical patterns of species introduction.88 One study found that the cover of native species 
varied from 20% to 60% on spontaneously vegetated sites, compared to lawns at 20%. While 
most of the common plant species were not native and the value of spontaneous sites as habitat 
for plant conservation is uncertain, the authors suggest that they may still represent important 
habitat for these native species.89 
One strategy for creating a highly diverse site may be to seed native species into the site 
after disturbance (mowing/cutting). Native grasses have been successfully reintroduced into 
urban wilds by seeding with and without mycorrhizal inoculation. Addition of native species to 
sites can result in novel urban meadows where ruderal species and rare grassland species can 
coexist.90 
                                                      
83 Ibid. 
84 Rupprecht et al., “Informal Urban Green Space: A Trilingual Systematic Review of Its Role for 
Biodiversity and Trends in the Literature.” 
85 Schadek et al., “Plant Species Richness, Vegetation Structure and Soil Resources of Urban Brownfield 
Sites Linked to Successional Age.” 
86 Kattwinkel et al., “Modelling Multi-Species Response to Landscape Dynamics.” 
87 Muratet et al., “The Role of Urban Structures in the Distribution of Wasteland Flora.” 
88 Rupprecht et al., “Informal Urban Green Space: A Trilingual Systematic Review of Its Role for 
Biodiversity and Trends in the Literature.” 
89 Robinson and Lundholm, “Ecosystem Services Provided by Urban Spontaneous Vegetation.” 
90 Fischer et al., “Creating Novel Urban Grasslands by Reintroducing Native Species in Wasteland 
Vegetation.” 
  24 
 
Ecological Value and Challenges of Railway Rights-of-Way 
The ecological value and challenges associated with rail rights-of-way are slightly 
different from those of urban wilds as a whole. Because of their narrow, linear nature, these 
spaces are entirely edge habitat, with no interior. They are subject to sunlight penetration 
throughout the site, drying winds from the side, and urban sites are subject to the urban heat 
island effect. Conditions on these sites are very challenging for many species. 
Rail rights-of-way appear to act as ecological corridors and habitat conduits for many 
species including coyotes, foxes, and other mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, and non-native 
plant species91. However, due to the fact that the thesis site is disconnected from the rest of the 
right-of-way, it functions more as an isolated patch than a connecting corridor. 
Cross sections of urban rail corridors provide heterogeneous habitats including outer 
fences, walls, or banks lined with woody plants, open flattish strips, ditches, sloped rail beds, and 
nutrient-poor top surfaces92. This varied topography can attract various species, for example, the 
open sun may be used for basking by reptiles, slopes may attract tunneling animals, and 
hedgerow wildlife may use the outer corridor. However, this heterogeneity may also act as a filter 
or barrier for urban wildlife attempting to cross the corridor.93  
On operating railway tracks, air turbulence, intensive use of herbicide, and mowing cause 
uniformity in the structure of the vegetation. Annual plants which quickly complete their life 
cycle when conditions are favorable (therophytes) and alien species dominate94. Colonization of 
plants increases after abandonment of tracks, although only a limited number can successfully 
naturalize due to harsh conditions. This process of colonization depends on the accessibility of 
                                                      
91 Forman, Urban Ecology; Wilkomirski et al., “Railway Tracks - Habitat Conditions, Contamination, 
Floristic Settlement - A Review.” 
92 Forman, Urban Ecology. 
93 Ibid., 278. 
94 Galera et al., “Encroachment of Forest Species into Operating and Abandoned Railway Areas in North-
Eastern Poland.” 
  25 
 
seeds or spores from the surrounding environment and on the shade factor on the tracks95. On the 
thesis site, adjacent backyards provide a source for many species, including invasive species, to 
colonize the site. This source may prove to be an important maintenance challenge. 
Soil acidity affects plant growth on railway tracks. Due to their construction, railway 
track basements initially have similar chemistry. Over time, pH remains relatively unchanged 
while other chemical features become more differentiated. In a study in Poland, railway tracks 
were found to be uniformly alkaline with a relatively small variation in pH (7.37 to 8.00). 
Surrounding areas contained soil with pH varying from 4.65 to 7.80.96 These results were similar 
to those found in a study of inactive railway yards on the Island of Montreal, which found a mean 
soil pH of 7.2 to 8.3 for three rail yards. Another study on brownfields also found alkalescent 
conditions in old railyards97. High pH values are a result of slag and ash fill in railway yards and 
can also be caused by concrete and mortar structures or rubble.98 
Railway sites are often contaminated with organic and inorganic contaminants. There are 
three main categories of pollutant: PAHs, heavy metals, and PCBs. PAHs are used in machine 
grease, fuel and transformer oils, and particularly in creosote. Creosote is a mixture of over 200 
compounds used as a preservative on railway ties; it can contain over 30 different PAHs with a 
possible total PAH content of 85% by weight.99 Creosote migrates from the railway ties into the 
soil. The chemical is persistent: elevated levels were found in the oil from olive trees growing 
near a pile of old ties, and PAH levels remained elevated in a study of ten railway tracks which 
had been abandoned for at least ten years.100 
                                                      
95 Wilkomirski et al., “Railway Tracks - Habitat Conditions, Contamination, Floristic Settlement - A 
Review.” 
96 Galera et al., “Encroachment of Forest Species into Operating and Abandoned Railway Areas in North-
Eastern Poland.” 
97 Schadek et al., “Plant Species Richness, Vegetation Structure and Soil Resources of Urban Brownfield 
Sites Linked to Successional Age.” 
98 Murray, Ge, and Hendershot, “Evaluating Three Trace Metal Contaminated Sites.” 
99 Wilkomirski et al., “Railway Tracks - Habitat Conditions, Contamination, Floristic Settlement - A 
Review.” 
100 Ibid. 
  26 
 
Heavy metal pollution derives from “fuel combustion, construction material abrasion and 
cargo leakage, as well as from tracks, wheels, brakes, and the overhead traction lines”101. Several 
studies have investigated heavy metals associated with railroad tracks and have found 
enrichments in the soil closest to the tracks, with concentrations decreasing with distance. 
Contamination levels were higher at cleaning bays and sidings. 
PCBs were widely used as “lubricants, fire-resistant dielectric fluids in transformers and 
capacitators, and heat-transfer fluids” until the mid-1970s.102 They bioaccumulate in living 
organisms and can be a serious threat to natural environments. If soil is polluted and contains 
high amounts of oil derivatives, PCBs are adsorbed (create a thin film on the surface.) If soil is 
unpolluted, PCBs can migrate into the soil. 
 
                                                      
101 Ibid. 
102 Ibid. 
  27 
 
Chapter 3: Site Analysis 
Context: The W&OD Railroad and Historic Transportation Networks 
The earliest descriptions and maps of the area surrounding the thesis site show it to be a 
nexus of transportation routes. The nearby town of Alexandria (incorporated 1779) was 
established as a tobacco trading post in its current location because of the depth of the Potomac 
River. The Washington Turnpike (now Rt. 1) bordering the site to the east was constructed in 
1809; the Alexandria Canal just across the Washington Turnpike was completed in 1843; and the 
Washington, Alexandria, and Mt. Vernon electric trolley bordering the site to the northwest was 
completed in 1896.  
The Washington and Old Dominion railroad was developed because northern Virginians 
wanted a share of the lucrative business that the rival port of Baltimore had acquired when the 
B&O railroad was extended into the Ohio River Valley. The original intention was to drill a 
tunnel almost three-quarters of a mile long west through the mountains at Bluemont, Virginia but 
due to a strategic acquisition by a competing line, this goal was never achieved.103 
Railroad construction began Feb 25, 1855 on the farm of Lewis Bailey, approximately 
five miles from the town of Alexandria, Virginia. The right-of-way was 100 feet wide. Ties were 
eight feet long, made of white oak, and numbered 2,700 to the mile. The section to link with the 
terminal in Alexandria was not yet funded, as filling, trestlework, and bridges were needed to 
span the Alexandria Canal, the Washington Turnpike (now Route 1), and swampland.104 By 1858, 
grading was completed to Leesburg and the depot in Alexandria was completed. In the civil war 
(1861-65), Confederate soldiers tore up the rails, heated them, and wrapped them around trees to 
prevent the use of the railway by Union forces.105 
                                                      
103 Williams, “The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad.” 
104 Ibid. 
105 Burns, “History of the Washington and Old Dominion.” 
  28 
 
Figure 8: Potomac Yards, 1916. Photo likely taken from the W&OD trestle. Rt. 1 on the left, looking north. 
Source: Library of Congress. 
 
 
Figure 9: The W&OD 
trestle with the St. Asaph 
waiting shed at Potomac 
Yards, 1957. Rt. 1 to the 
left, looking north. Fairfax 
County Public Library. 
 
  29 
 
The railroad changed names and ownership multiple times (From Alexandria and 
Harper’s Ferry to Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire in 1855; Washington and Ohio in 1870; 
Washington, Ohio, and Western in 1880; Washington and Old Dominion in 1912). The early 
history of the railroad, “like that of most of its contemporaries, is a monotonous series of financial 
crises” and funding schemes.106  
The W&OD had four stops in what is now 
Alexandria: a terminal, Potomac Yards, 
Alexandria Junction, and St. Elmo. The 
Alexandria Junction and St. Elmo stops were 
located on the thesis site and served the 
neighboring communities of Del Ray and St. 
Elmo. The St. Elmo stop allowed passengers 
on the W.A. & Mount Vernon Electric Trolley 
line, which ran along what is now Commonwealth Ave, to transfer to the W&OD. 
  At its peak, the railway was 72 miles long and moved passengers, freight, milk, and mail. 
Tourists flocked to Carlin Springs, which had a dancing pavilion and an ice cream parlor, and the 
summer hotels and boardinghouses of Bluemont. Hunters and fishermen used the train to reach 
the rural areas of Loudoun County. While passenger revenue reached its peak in 1919 and 
subsequently declined each year, freight revenue generally increased. By 1939, the segment of 
track between Purcellville and Bluemont was abandoned, as passenger business had declined, 
apples were now transported by truck, and the flour mill at Round Hill had closed down. 
Passenger and mail service ended in 1951. The construction of Dulles Airport in 1957 provided 
an uptick in freight traffic and in 1959, operating revenues reached an all-time high. 
                                                      
106 Williams, “The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad.” 
Figure 10: Mail distribution at Bluemont Jct., 1937. 
Fairfax County Public Library. 
  30 
 
However, in 1962, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Virginia Department of 
Highways forced the abandonment of the Rosslyn branch of the railroad in favor of Highway 66 
and an urban renewal project. This reduced a large source of freight traffic. In 1965, the Virginia 
Department of Highways, backed by the Federal Bureau of Public Roads, entered into an 
agreement with the W&OD to purchase 30.5 miles of the right of way. After years of legal 
battles, the railroad ended operations in August of 1968.107  
              
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                      
107 Ibid. 
Figure 11: Bulldozer pulling ties from 
Alexandria viaduct, 1969. Fairfax County Public 
Library. 
Figure 12: Pile of ties removed from Alexandria 
viaduct, 1969. Fairfax County Public Library. 
Figure 14: Cutting rails at Grove Ave., 1969. Fairfax County 
Public Library. 
Figure 13: Tracks west of Rte. 1 
being removed, 1969. Fairfax 
County Public Library. 
  31 
 
While proposals were floated for the use of the abandoned right of way, none came to 
fruition. A proposal to use the right of way as an arterial road can be seen on the City of 
Alexandria Major Thoroughfare Plan Map from Feb. 1962, but this road was never built. 108 A 
significant portion of the right of way remains intact to this day. 
To the northwest of the project site, segments of the right of way were sold off and 
buildings have been constructed, separating the project site from the bulk of the right-of way, 
which remains intact except for the section between Purcellville and Bluemont. Southeast of the 
project site, the trestle over Potomac Yards no longer exists, and the yards themselves were 
decommissioned in 1989. Thus, the project site does not directly connect to the rest of the right-
of-way on either end and stands as a self-contained segment. 
 All other historic transportation modes in this area except the road network have also 
been abandoned and removed. The Alexandria Canal was abandoned in 1886 as railroads became 
ascendant and was eventually filled in. The Washington, Alexandria, and Mt. Vernon electric 
trolley went into receivership in 1923 due to the spread of buses, and the last trolley ran in 1932. 
However, as of 2017, a new metro station is being built nearby at the former Potomac Yards to 
serve area commuters, and a bus rapid transit line, opened in 2014, now runs down Rt. 1. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                      
108 Ball, “Electric Railways of Arlington.” 
  32 
 
 
  33 
 
 
  34 
 
 
  35 
 
Site- Specific History 
1900: By 1900, St. Elmo and Del Ray had been subdivided, the electric trolley line had 
been complete for four years, and Potomac Yards was six years away from opening. The area 
began to be settled by commuters taking the trolley into Washington and then by workers at the 
yards. By 1894 the St. Asaph racetrack was operating in the Del Ray neighborhood, as seen near 
the center of the 189- perspective below, which also shows the railroad running just beyond it.
  
Figure 18: 189- Perspective of Northwest Alexandria with racetrack and railroad. Library of Congress. 
1921: In 1908, St. Elmo and Del Ray were incorporated into the town of Potomac.109 The 
St. Asaph racetrack became the center of a debate about gambling and was raided by an attorney 
in 1904, who smashed the gambling equipment and arrested the owners.110 The track was closed 
in 1905, and by the time of the 1914 photo below, homeless African-Americans were living in the 
grandstand. The building burned in 1916 and the land was used by the Army as a mobilization 
camp in 1917-18.111 The development of the former racetrack site swiftly followed 1921, when a 
digital Sanborn map showed the site as empty. In 1922 the Abington subdivision was created on 
                                                      
109 Leland, “The Town of Potomac Informational Sign.” 
110 Pope, “Hidden History of St. Asaph Racetrack.” 
111 Leland, “St. Asaph Racetrack Informational Sign.” 
  36 
 
the land112 and by 1927, the aerial photo below shows new roads and construction throughout the 
former racetrack site, outlined in red. 
 
 1959: The town of Potomac was annexed by Alexandria in 1930. By 1959, there was a 
near complete infill of buildings on the site, mostly small single-family homes and duplexes, and 
there was a significant industrial development at the Alexandria Junction site, which was now 
called the Oakville Triangle. Potomac Yards grew larger. The stream seen on earlier maps 
disappeared but remains in property line patterns. 
 Railroad spurs led into the 24.3-acre Oakville Triangle industrial site. According to the 
1941- July 1959 Sanborn map, this site contained warehouses including communications, 
aviation supplies, metal, metal stamping, commercial stage, biscuit and gro., beer, steel 
                                                      
112 Leland, “The Town of Potomac Informational Sign.” 
Figure 20: St. Asaph Racetrack in Alexandria, 
VA, 1902. Wikipedia 
Figure 19: 1927 aerial of Del Ray and Alexandria Jct. 
with former racetrack site in red. National Archives, 
ID 305955 
Figure 21: Asaph Racetrack 1914. Arlington 
County Historic Society. 
  37 
 
equipment, steel and hardware, insulation material, paper bag, and bottle. Manufacturing included 
electronics, bottling works, film developing, ice cream, and meat packing. 
 2015: In 1989 Potomac Yards was decommissioned, leaving only two railroad tracks. A 
strip mall development with large chain stores was built immediately to the north of the context 
area. Plans for an infill Metrorail station are currently underway, and plans for the development 
of the entire site have been completed. The area is being redeveloped into a mixed-use urban 
community with office, residential, and retail spaces.113 
In 2014, the Oakville Triangle site was occupied by firms including printing, metal 
fabrication, equipment and construction materials supply companies, and auto related businesses. 
This area continued to be fully leased in 2014, as there was a limited amount of industrial land in 
the city of Alexandria.114 Thirteen acres of Oakville Triangle were owned by the Blackstone 
Group in 2014, and those acres were the subject of a redevelopment plan created in 2015. 
 Future: The planning document for the new Oakville Triangle development touts a new 
transit-oriented development which will include a “diversity of residential, office, hotel, and 
regional and neighborhood-serving retail use, as well as an emerging “maker” economy.”115 The 
massing of the buildings and the road layout in Oakville Triangle and along Route One will be 
altered, and a road, “Park Road” will be added along the northeast side of the railway right-of-
way between Fannon and Calvert Streets. The proposed maximum gross floor area (GFA) for the 
new development is as follows: 135,200 office, 145,300 hotel, 193,900 retail, 140,300 retail 
maker space, 1,791,500 multifamily unit and 270,100 townhomes.116 
The plan includes a redesign of Mt. Jefferson park (the southeastern portion of the thesis 
site) by the firm Land Design. The redesign includes a proposed trail entrance at Swann Ave., a 
landscaped dog exercise area, improved drainage, mounds buffering the park from the new road, 
                                                      
113 City of Alexandria, “North Potomac Yard Small Area Plan.” 
114 City of Alexandria, “Potomac West Small Area Plan.” 
115 City of Alexandria, “Oakville Triangle & Route 1 Corridor Vision Plan and Urban Design Standards & 
Guidelines.” 
116 Ibid., 21. 
  38 
 
the addition of ornamental trees and shrubs, removal of invasive species, trail resurfacing, 
removal of a building extending into the right of way, and the addition of a row of trees along the 
new Park Road. Despite this existing redesign, I have chosen to investigate this site because it 
offers a good opportunity to design a wildscape that is responsive to current and past conditions. 
 
Figure 22: Mt. Jefferson Park Concept Design.117 Public document. 
  
 
  
                                                      
117 City of Alexandria, “Oakville Triangle & Route 1 Corridor Vision Plan and Urban Design Standards & 
Guidelines.” 
  39 
 
  40 
 
  41 
 
  42 
 
  43 
 
 
  44 
 
Human Structures and Demographics 
Figure Ground 
In the context area, there are many houses on small lots and an industrial triangle 
containing much larger buildings which are long and narrow. There is a sharp distinction between 
the industrial and residential buildings in terms of scale. The rectangular street grid is cut 
diagonally by the railroad right of way, leading to triangular unbuilt spaces along the right of 
way, particularly on the northwestern half. The nearby Potomac Yard development is halfway 
constructed but will soon be uniformly dense. 
The relationship between the residential and industrial areas has changed, as the 
neighborhood no longer houses industrial and rail workers. It will continue to change with new 
development that will alter the built structure of Oakville Triangle. There are few public open 
spaces in this neighborhood and few large open space areas.  
Fences 
The large majority of the residential lots are fenced on three sides, whereas the lots in 
Oakville Triangle are mostly unfenced except where they abut the railway right of way. Former 
fences existed across the right of way in three locations and contributed to existing tree lines and 
vegetation patterns. Fences in the neighborhood may make it difficult for large ground-based 
animals to move through the neighborhood, although other animals will not be affected. The 
fences along the thesis site contribute to a sense of linearity and restrict access. Fence locations 
will change with new development; see the access and circulation section below. 
Access and Circulation  
There are currently only four access points in the southeastern segment of the park, but 
the new Oakville development will open up the park considerably. Once the planned new Park 
road is built, around half of this segment will be accessible from all points on the northeastern 
edge. This is in sharp contrast to the existing park, where access occurs only at specific nodes. 
Currently, those wishing to cross the southeastern segment of the park have one entrance from 
  45 
 
Randolph St. and must dogleg through the park to Calvert Ave. The current closed-in feel of this 
segment will change considerably with the new development, and it will be important to consider 
how much enclosure is desirable here. 
Due to three road crossings, there are eight access points in the northwestern segment of 
the park. Because of all of these crossings and access points, the northwestern segment of the 
park is much less enclosed and does not feel like a unified space. It will be important to create 
unity throughout the northwestern segment. It may be useful to visually indicate that the park 
continues across the roads for safety and continuity reasons. 
Demographics 
The demographics for the neighborhoods surrounding the park were tabulated by census 
block group, as that was the most granular data I could find. Information was obtained from the 
2010 Census. While the American Community Survey is taken every year and thus contains more 
recent data, it only polls a statistically small sample of the population and is less accurate, 
particularly for an area as small as this context area. Thus, the older Census data was used.  
Age: In Alexandria as a whole, by 
far the highest numbers of residents are in 
their 30s and their upper 20s, with the 
numbers tapering off evenly in the higher 
age categories. There is a sharp drop off 
among college-aged adults and younger 
children. Due to Alexandria’s location, the 
city and the new Oakville Triangle 
development may primarily attract people 
in their 20s and 30s and a park should provide activities that will interest these age groups. 
Figure 28 Alexandria Population by Age and Sex in 1960 
and 2010. From the Alexandria 2010 Census Data Profile 
  46 
 
The number of children from 0-9 is higher in every block in the context area than the 
number of children from age 10-19. It is projected that the Oakville Triangle development will 
add 67 new students to the Alexandria City Schools, and if 91 affordable housing units were 
included, 55 additional students would be generated.118 Park space adjacent to their homes could 
provide a place for these children to adventure and play. 
Population Density: The dashed line outlines the census block containing the planned 
Oakville Triangle development. While all other blocks show existing population density, I 
calculated the projected population density for this block based on data provided by the City of 
Alexandria. At 48 people per acre, it will be the second-densest census block in the context area. 
The true density of Potomac Yards is not portrayed, as significant development has occurred 
since 2010. As development continues in the area, there will be even greater pressure for parks 
and open spaces and this site can address some of that pressure. 
Race and Ethnicity: Most of the census tracts in the context area have a clear majority of 
white residents, with the exception of those near Four Mile Run, which identify both as white and 
as Hispanic and have a high percentage of other races. One tract near the south of the context area 
is majority black, with others near Old Town Alexandria having a larger percentage of black 
residents. More black residents live in St. Elmo than in Del Ray. 
 Alexandria has historically had a significant African-American population. In 1880, 40% 
of the population was black, which fell to 11% by the 1960 census. This change was partially due 
to the City's annexation of a large area of additional land which was predominantly white. Most 
African-Americans lived immediately to the west and the northwest of the original town site. By 
1980, the black population more than doubled to 23,0005, or 22.3% of the city's population. As of 
2010, the black population has increased to 30,491 and makes up 21.8% of the population.119 
                                                      
118 Ibid., 139. 
119 City of Alexandria, “Alexandria 2010 Census Data Profile.” 
  47 
 
The percent change in the black population in the St. Elmo and Del Ray neighborhoods 
between the 2000 and 2010 censuses were -38.7 and -46.6%, respectively, and other census 
blocks nearby had similar shifts, from -34.6% to -63.9%.120 Gentrification and rising home prices 
in Alexandria have had the effect of pushing out many longtime black and working-class 
residents.121 If possible, the design of this site should provide space for both new and old 
residents without contributing further to gentrification, although this is a tricky issue and as a 
whole is outside the scope of this thesis. 
  
                                                      
120 Ibid. 
121 Cohn and Smith, “Census Finds More Whites In D.C., Close Va. Suburbs.” 
  48 
 
  49 
 
  50 
 
  51 
 
  52 
 
  53 
 
 
  54 
 
Abiotic Factors 
Soils   
Soil information from the USDA’s Web Soil Survey application was of limited use due to 
the history of disturbance on the site. The thesis site was both excavated and filled extensively in 
the 1850s from an unknown source, possibly the side cut to the northwest of the site or with fly 
ash or other waste material. As discussed in chapter two, soils in former railroad rights-of-way 
may have a high pH relative to surrounding soil and may be contaminated. Site soil testing would 
be required in order to determine specific chemical and physical properties, which is outside the 
scope of this thesis.  
It is possible, however, that the current soil retains some of the properties of the original 
soil, which was Grist Mill sandy loam. This soil is a sandy loam from 0 to 6 inches and sandy 
clay loam below. It has a pH of 4.8, very strongly acidic, and is listed both as being well-drained 
and as hydrologic soil group C. The side cut to the northwest of the site contains Kingstowne 
sandy clay loam, with a sandy clay loam from 0 to 4 inches and a clay loam from 4 to 60 inches. 
The pH, drainage class, and hydrologic soil group are the same as the Grist Mill soil. Because the 
existing topography is an important historical site characteristic, the soil will not be extensively 
modified in most locations. Urban gardening or orchards will not be pursued on the site due to 
possible contamination issues.  
Hydrology 
There is a three-way watershed divide on the eastern segment of the site between the 
drainages of Four Mile Run, Hooff’s Run, and the Potomac River. Due to the highly-developed 
nature of this watershed, most runoff flows through the storm drain system.  
Ditches on the long edges of the site channel runoff toward the ends. On the southeastern 
portion of the site, water drains southeast in two channels parallel to the raised trackbed. The 
northernmost of these surfaces as an open channel after flowing from two inlets in an Oakville 
Triangle parking lot. The southern one consists of concrete channel liners and inlet structures, 
  55 
 
which collect sediment and standing water and contribute to a mosquito problem. Drainage on the 
northeast part of the right of way is channeled into two grassed swales, which empty eventually 
into an inlet. The topography is less extreme in this segment and drainage or standing water does 
not appear to be a major problem. 
There are two seasonally wet areas on the site. One is a large depression near Raymond 
Avenue where the soils are very compacted. Water infiltrates slowly here. The other is a sloping 
segment of concrete where runoff is prevented through topography. Frogs and birds have been 
observed using this seasonal pool. There is potential to work with both seasonal wetlands to 
increase plant species and animal habitat. 
A stream, now underground, flowed through Del Ray and under the west end of the right-
of-way segment at Commonwealth Ave. Park design or interpretation could include information 
about this channel. Overall, the design should improve the functioning of water on the site in 
terms of flow or infiltration, purification, and habitat value. 
 
Elevation and Slope  
 The site contains significant variation in elevation, from a height of 56 feet on the 
southeastern end to a height of 20.5 feet on the northwestern end. The southeastern end of the 
park has been built up around 16 feet from the surrounding neighborhood, an area in the middle 
of the park is recessed around 6 feet, and the northwestern end is built up 8 feet on one side and is 
Figure 35: Concrete Vernal Pool. Author. Figure 36: Drainage structure. Author. 
  56 
 
nearly level on the other. As the site is a former railroad bed, it has a minimal longitudinal slope 
(no greater than 8%) except at both ends where bridge crossings once existed above roads. The 
sides of the site are also steep in some places (greater than 33% in the southeastern portion), as 
material was cut or filled within the 100’ wide right of way in order to obtain the correct grade. 
The topography may need to be altered in order to provide ADA access. Views may be possible 
from the southeastern portion of the park, as there is significant elevation gain in that location, 
although current views are of residential backyards and the top of an industrial building. 
  
  57 
 
  58 
 
  59 
 
 
  60 
 
Biotic Factors 
Green Space Connections and Nearby Habitat 
  This analysis was performed with aerial orthoimagery from 2006, as the 2013 version 
contained a large number of high-resolution tiles which needed to be downloaded individually, 
some of which were missing. The 2006 and 2013 images are similar when viewed at this scale 
except for the former Potomac Yard site, which is now more developed and less barren. Due to 
the use of aerial imagery, it was difficult to determine understory vegetation existence or type in 
cases of dense tree cover.  
The context area around the thesis site is extremely patchy, with several different types of 
development patterns apparent. The thesis site itself is a long, linear patch which is not directly 
connected on its ends but instead connects diffusely to residential back yards along its sides.  
North and south of the site is a densely built grid of single-family homes and duplexes on 
small lots, each with small individual back yards that form linear green spaces which are 
interrupted by roads. These yards likely contain a mix of mowed grass, shade trees, and planting 
beds with a wide variety of species. Many of these apparently connected yards contain fences, 
which may act as a barrier to some species and not others. These yards are likely a significant 
source for plants which may spread onto the thesis site. 
To the north, east and northeast of the site are industrial and shopping areas with 
extremely high percentages of impervious surface and very little green cover. These areas likely 
act as a barrier to many animals and provide very little habitat. 
 There are some large patches of forest vegetation on Daingerfield Island along the 
Potomac River and in Four Mile Run Park which likely contain a multilayered forest structure 
and possibly wetlands. A birding website, ebird.org, contains data on 179 species of birds which 
have been spotted at Daingerfield Island. While these are connected by water, neither patch is 
connected to similar habitat patches on land. A highway, railroad tracks, and fingers of 
  61 
 
development cut off Daingerfield Island, while Four Mile Run Park is surrounded by multifamily 
developments with open lawn and shade trees. 
To the west of the thesis site, there is more open space, as single-family residential house 
lots are much larger and impervious surface cover is less. Curvilinear roads and cul-de-sacs 
provide for longer connected green areas in some cases. As with the denser residential area 
directly adjacent to the thesis site, these lots are likely mostly mowed lawn, shade trees, and 
ornamental plantings. There is one 7-acre park in this area, Monticello Park, which contains 
multilayered forest vegetation and 150 reported bird species on ebird.org. 
Aside from the three parks which contain understory vegetation and shrubs along with 
canopy trees, most of the green space in the context area consists of mowed lawn, shade trees, 
and planted ornamental vegetation. The thesis site thus provides an opportunity to increase the 
diversity of habitat types by including meadow and early-successional vegetation along with 
additional multilayered forest habitat linking residential back yards. 
  
Vegetation Distribution 
I collected tree location data with my phone and an app called Mapit-Mobile. Data 
collection was successful but the GPS on my phone was not very accurate. Accuracy was better 
on the northwestern portion of the site but where the topography became pronounced on the 
southeastern portion, data points became very inaccurate.  
I also ran into difficulties in counting trees. In the beginning, I did not create a standard 
for the minimum size at which I would record a tree because most trees on the northwestern part 
of the site were large. This became a problem when I encountered many sapling trees in the 
southeastern portion of the site. In the future, I would set this standard at the beginning of data 
collection and also measure tree DBH in order to analyze tree size. The tree charts to follow 
should be considered estimates in terms of distribution. Despite these difficulties, I am impressed 
with the capabilities of my phone and a free app. 
  62 
 
 
In the northwestern part of the site there are many fewer trees due to the fact that it is 
mowed regularly. There, trees are mostly growing along fence lines or streets, with some planted 
trees in the interior of the site. This section of the park contains a higher percentage of ornamental 
trees and fewer invasive species. 
Maintenance was discontinued in the southeastern portion of the park. This has led to 
both greater diversity of trees and a greater percentage of invasive tree species. Mowing was 
discontinued at different times, leading to a variety of stand ages. In some locations fencelines or 
past uses or can be seen in the current distribution of trees, as in a rectangular-shaped ‘room’ near 
the center of the site, which was used to park cars. These existing visual maintenance histories 
may be used and adapted when designing the site. 
There is a strong concentration species distributed by birds and wind on the site. Wind-
distributed trees include catalpa, elms, maples, tree of heaven, pines, and cottonwood. Bird-
distributed trees include mulberry, black cherry, callery pear, and eastern red cedar. Other trees 
on site were clearly planted by humans including lacebark elms, red and willow oaks (due to their 
location around a playground), blue spruces, and southern magnolias.  
 The chart above shows the Figure 40: Tree Species Distribution 
  63 
 
distribution of trees on the site. Trees with fewer than 10 occurrences were included in the ‘other’ 
category. Tree species with fewer than 10 occurrences included, in order from most frequent to 
least: mimosa (Albizia julibrissin), scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea), red oak (Quercus rubra), 
willow oak (Quercus phellos), rose of sharon (Hibiscus syriacus), Chinese holly (Ilex cornuta), 
white oak (Quercus alba), hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), blue spruce (Picea pungens), white ash 
(Fraxinus americana), redbud (Cercis canadensis), black gum (Nyssa sylvatica), lacebark elm 
(Ulmus parvifolia), box elder (Acer negundo), chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), crape myrtle 
(Lagerstroemia sp.), dogwood (Cornus florida), eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), 
American holly (Ilex opaca), southern magnolia (Magnolia grandifolia), chestnut oak (Quercus 
montana), peach (Prunus persica), princess tree (Paulownia tomentosa), sycamore (Platanus 
occidentalis), and tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipfera). Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) was 
observed but not recorded, as its stems were very small. 
Only four of the thirteen most common 
species were invasive, although invasive 
trees made up around 63% of trees on the 
site. This number would be even higher if 
very small trees (1-2 inches in diameter) 
were counted, as most of these were 
mulberries. Most of the invasive species are 
located on the southeastern half of the site. 
Mulberries make up at least 22% of trees, tree of heaven 5%, Norway maple 4%, and callery pear 
2%. Only one princess tree was identified, although not all small trees were examined. 
Most invasive species except mulberry are localized into a few regions, for example, 
Norway maples are clustered on the north side of the steep embankment. Routine monitoring 
should be undertaken to determine whether these species are spreading. Any invasive species that 
are removed should be replaced with species adapted to site conditions. 
Figure 41: Native and Invasive Tree Distribution 
  64 
 
While I did not map or count vine species, I did create a list of species identified. The six 
native vines on the site include poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), Virginia creeper 
(Parthenocissus qunquefolia), maypop (Passiflora incarnate), honeyvine milkweed (Cynanchum 
leave), greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia), and a species of grape (Vitis sp.). While poison ivy is 
beneficial for wildlife, it is noxious to humans and should be removed in areas where people will 
come into contact with it. 
The five invasive vines on the site include Japanese clematis (Clematis ternifolia), 
Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), Chinese or Japanese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis or 
floribunda), English ivy (Hedera helix), and porcelain berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata). 
 Vines, both native and invasive, are climbing over other vegetation and smothering it in 
the wild half of the park. There is a significant potential for a vine removal and management 
program, possibly involving community members and volunteer days. If invasive species are 
removed, tough native plants with wildlife value should be planted or seeded to replace them. 
 
 
 
 
  
  65 
 
  66 
 
  67 
 
 
  68 
 
Linear Parks: Design Strategies 
 Karl Kullmann creates a typology of linear parks in his article “Thin parks/thick edges: 
towards a linear park typology for (post)infrastructural sites.”122 These types include filter, 
programme sink, conduit, suture, stage, pedestal, and thicket. In the following paragraphs, I will 
use this typology as a framework to discuss which strategies might be applicable in the design of 
the thesis site. 
 
Figure 45: Thin park typologies. Reprinted from “Thin Parks / Thick Edges: Towards a Linear 
Park Typology for (Post)infrastructural Sites ” by Karl Kullmann, 2012, Journal of Landscape 
Architecture 12: 70–81. Reprinted with permission. 
 
 Filter selectively edits a through-flow of matter across a site, including vehicular traffic, 
cyclists, pedestrians, and sight lines. The Panhandle in San Francisco is one example. Kullmann 
states that these parks do not function well with “lower flow volumes and less concentrated 
usage.” I would argue that there is not enough traffic across the thesis site in enough locations for 
this type to work well. The new Oakville development might increase the amount of cross traffic, 
but access from the western side will still be limited to four locations. 
                                                      
122 Kullmann, “Thin Parks / Thick Edges.” 
  69 
 
 Programme Sink is a thin park filled with precisely defined functional uses, usually 
sports courts and fields or community gardens. Due to the varied topography on the site, this type 
would not be possible as an organizing type unless an extensive cut and fill program were 
undertaken, which would remove the remaining traces of site history. 
Conduit acts as a conduit for rapid, non-vehicular movement. It is usually seen in rails-
to-trails paths or along canal towpaths. The northwest portion of the thesis site could be 
characterized as a conduit, as it contains a paved path and little else, but it seems to be more used 
by dog-walkers than bicyclists due to its short length. It would be possible for the entire site to be 
designed as a conduit, but it is also fairly short and does not connect to the rest of the right of way 
or bicycle networks. Additionally, low-traffic neighborhood streets already serve as a safe 
connection for travel between Commonwealth Ave. and Route One.  
Suture is used primarily to stitch up an urban rupture or wound. An example is the Rose 
Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, which covers a now-buried freeway. This type is not applicable, 
as the thesis site contains no rift formed by infrastructure. 
 Stage is a necklace of events or spectacles, with a combination of spaces scaled and 
oriented to host events, and with creative event programming. This type has a “central spine of 
sequential ‘landing sites’ that host both spontaneous and premeditated events,” such as 
Mauerpark. It is possible for the thesis site to be designed as a stage, or series of stages, although 
care should be taken to respect the residential neighbors of the park. 
 Pedestal is an elevated, linear setting for “externalized spectacles or panoramas.” These 
parks have a symbiotic relationship with their surroundings; views outward are very important. 
The High Line is the best-known example of this type. While the extreme southeastern part of the 
thesis site is significantly elevated and could function as a pedestal, most of the site is not, and 
views are currently of residential backyards and the back of a warehouse, not significant fodder 
for public spectacles or panoramas.  
  70 
 
Thicket is not designed but is a type of urban wild. Kullmann states that, “Applied 
design has an ambiguous and even fraught relationship with the thicket,” and employs examples 
including un-engineered urban rivers and portions of the overgrown no-man's-land which slice 
through Kreutzberg, Berlin. He suggests that “rather than attempting to heal a linear rift with a 
suture, the thicket fills the thin park with dense matter” and this typology “literally ‘re-grows’ 
ingrained urban fissures as ‘thresholds’ rather than ‘ruptures.’” The southeast portion of the thesis 
site is clearly already a thicket of sorts, with user-made paths mostly following the rail bed, 
although the vegetation is not so dense as Kullmann describes, having been mowed and managed 
for many years.  
Having investigated possible design typologies for this linear site, I will keep the types of 
“stage” and “thicket” in mind as design possibilities for the thesis site. While this categorization 
of the existing site as a “thicket” is useful, Kullmann does not provide suggestions about how one 
might design a thicket, nor any examples of designed thickets. For that, I will turn to the next 
chapter on strategies for designing urban wilds. 
 
Summary of Design Directives from Site Analysis 
Human Structures & Demographics  
• Retain a sense of enclosure in the southeastern segment after new development goes in. 
• Create unity in the segmented northwestern part of the site. 
• Provide activities of interest to residents in their 20s and 30s and adults of all ages. 
• Provide a space for children to adventure and play. 
• Alter topography where necessary to provide ADA access through and across the site. 
Ecology 
• Improve the functioning of water on site in terms of flow, infiltration, and habitat value. 
• Improve novel vernal pool habitat by experimenting with plant additions. 
  71 
 
• Interpret the former stream which flowed across the northwest end of the site. 
• Increase the diversity of habitat types in the context area by adding meadow, early-
successional vegetation, and multilayered forest habitat. 
• Provide linear connectivity of habitat types when possible. 
• Address vine overgrowth through management and community volunteer days. 
• Undertake monitoring on invasive species spread and effect of maintenance activities. 
• Opportunity to seed spontaneous vegetation after a disturbance with tough native plants, 
particularly grasses, to create novel urban meadows. 
• Any vegetation planted should be tolerant of high pH and contaminated/disturbed soil. 
Design Strategies 
• Combine linear park design typologies of ‘stage’ and ‘thicket’. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  72 
 
Chapter 4: Wild to Wildscape: Strategies for Designing Urban Wilds 
The language of things and the way things are combined create information that is 
linguistic in character. If [landscapes] are to acquire this linguistic character, they need 
everything that language constitutes: they need a diversity of terms and a strong syntax. 
–Peter Latz123 
Can we categorize the ways in which a design may act upon an urban wild? Which of 
these strategies are most successful at allowing wildscapes to retain their essential historic and 
wild character while also providing the benefits of design? In this section, I integrate a framework 
developed by Heatherington, who explores urban wilds through a textual lens, with Jill 
Desimini’s extended typology of natures and my own analysis. 
In the course of my research for the next section, I gathered and organized design 
suggestions on the topic. I discovered that, with a few exceptions, design suggestions fit into three 
categories: history/time, vegetation, and access/interactivity (and the overlapping categories 
between each). Time/history, vegetation, and access/interactivity exist on independent axes of 
intervention, from complete destruction, erasure, and control of the urban wild to lack of any 
intentional intervention.  
Time/History: The difference between time and history is that while history contains 
stories of time that has passed, time is ongoing. Thus, this category contains past, current, and 
future time and the artefacts and cultural products thereof. A design may completely destroy 
traces of past history, may preserve past traces completely without new interventions, or preserve 
some traces while destroying or creating others. 
Vegetation: This category includes any planted or spontaneous vegetative growth existing 
on an urban wild. A design may completely remove this vegetation and replace it with other 
plantings or a static simulacrum, vegetation may be left as it is without intervention, or design or 
management may act upon the vegetation, preserving some and altering some. Often, vegetation 
                                                      
123 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape, 87. 
  73 
 
is perceived as a signal restricting or limiting access. Even grass can function in this way (“stay 
off the grass”) but more often groundcovers, shrubs, or herbaceous plants serve this function.124  
Access/Interactivity: This category includes whether the site is freely accessible, the 
number of rules and uses permitted on a site, the level of control or surveillance, and how 
interactive the space is. Is interaction limited to viewing or are many activities permitted? Is there 
one strict program which must be adhered to? Is access limited by park hours or fees?  Some 
authors believe that the strict control or “over-programming” of a space may reduce the ability of 
users to create their own or collective user-generated programs. Armstrong suggests that the 
landscapes of our cities “are so pervasively programmed that there are few places where one can 
withdraw to linger and reflect”.125 
 
Design through Erasure 
 
Figure 46: Design through Erasure. Author. 
The traditional method of designing urban wilds is erasure and destruction of wild 
aspects and creation of a new, controlled space such as an urban development, infrastructure 
project, or park. This can happen at any time during the history of a space, and in fact can happen 
completely or partially at multiple times through history. Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, 
finished in 1867, is a well-known example of a conventional park designed from an urban wild. It 
                                                      
124 Nevárez, “Central Park, the Aesthetics of Order and the Appearance of Looseness.” 
125 Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty.” 
  74 
 
was built on a site that had previously been a refuse dump, a sewage repository, and a gypsum 
and limestone quarry. The land was shaped extensively during park development and transformed 
into a landscape of green lawns, ornamental shade trees, and a lake. It shares an aesthetics of 
order with many conventional parks of different origins, in which uses are limited explicitly 
through posted rules and implicitly through the use of plantings and landscaping to show areas 
where visitors are permitted to enter and move through the park.126 Nevárez suggests that beauty, 
cleanliness, and surveillance, while difficult to argue against, reduce participation by users to that 
of a passive spectator and these effects should be seriously considered. Obviously, if design by 
erasure occurs on an urban wild, it no longer contains any of the characteristics of an urban wild 
and cannot be categorized as such. This type of design may be necessary, however, if a site is 
extremely toxic and a complete removal of existing vegetation and earth is required. 
 
Design through Mimicry 
 
Figure 47: Design through Mimicry. Author. 
Design through mimicry is the inclusion of visual cues and symbols which represent 
wildness in a space which is not actually allowed to be wild. This category contains parks that 
symbolically incorporate relics, materials, buildings, infrastructure, or vegetation communities 
                                                      
126 Nevárez, “Central Park, the Aesthetics of Order and the Appearance of Looseness.” 
  75 
 
from an urban wild into a new landscape.127 In these designs, as we will see, the relics run the risk 
of becoming static symbols and visitors may not connect with them. While these sites retain 
objects or visual elements from their wild urban past and sometimes appear wild to the untrained 
eye, they are in fact highly controlled spaces. 
As recently as 1971, Richard Haag met with intense initial resistance to his plan for Gas 
Works Park in Seattle, which incorporated the structural remains of a gas generating plant into a 
public park. Haag’s ideas were then seen as progressive, as “monument conservation was in its 
infancy and there were no industrial monuments at the time.”128 The park incorporates relics for 
their aesthetic impact and separates visitors from the remaining structures with a fence. The site’s 
incredible toxicity and complicated history is hidden and erased by a layer of green lawn. “Today 
the Gas Works Park looks like a simply designed leisure park, with the industrial monuments 
resplendent…fascinating in its aesthetic appearance, but puzzling in terms of its significance”.129 
The remaining ruins are symbols of a wildness the park no longer contains. 
During the competition for Landschaftspark-Duisburg Nord in 1989, the chair of the jury 
expressed disappointment with all but two of the designs created by design teams, complaining 
that, “The park ideas that were developed were surprisingly conventional in the end… derived as 
they were from the classical ideas of the English or French park. They fitted in with the culture of 
forgetting and suppressing…” (107).130 She criticized the fact “that the steelworks would survive 
everywhere inside [these designed paradises], as an alienated, incomprehensible object”.131 A Gas 
Works-style park was not to succeed in this competition, as we will see shortly. 
Designs that use ruins or traces as symbols to mimic a wild past are not simply relegated 
to past decades. Armstrong criticized designs shown in the 2005 MOMA exhibition 
                                                      
127 Heatherington, “Buried Narratives.” 
128 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape. 
129 Ibid. 
130 Ibid., 107. 
131 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape. 
  76 
 
“Groundswell,” which proposed new uses for derelict urban land, for portraying their industrial 
past as “frozen set pieces”.132 
 The High Line, constructed from 2006 through 2014, is one of the best-known recent 
examples of this type of design in the United States. Extensive theoretical criticism has been 
leveled at the project. It was likely necessary, as the designers have argued, to remove the 
existing surface of the line in order to inspect and repair the substructure, but in the place of the 
previous wild nature, the designers imposed a static and highly-maintained planting design on the 
park. This design replaces “actual successional ecologies with artificial ones based on picturesque 
traditions”.133 In the third “interim” section of the park, urban plants are currently being left to 
grow up on their own outside of the designed walkway, but that is intended as a temporary feature 
and a redesign will “complete” the park within 10-15 years.134 
The list of rules in the park is extensive; “behaviour is tightly controlled [and] appropriate 
behaviour [is] regularly enforced by other visitors and the ubiquitous presence of maintenance 
staff and park police”.135 In fact, interaction with the park is limited to the experience of viewing 
and any activity that is not visual (aside from sitting on benches) is actively discouraged. 
Chan points out that ruins, which are already allegories of “the imperfect way the past is 
remembered,” have meanings that are lost when they are “polished, painted, and planted”.136 The 
High Line, subject to these forces, has become a symbol of an industrial past and a former urban 
wild but is no longer actually wild. 
 
  
                                                      
132 Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty.” 
133 Langhorst, “Re-Presenting Transgressive Ecologies,” 1110. 
134 Robarts, “Northernmost Section of New York’s High Line Opened.” 
135 Langhorst, “Re-Presenting Transgressive Ecologies,” 1123. 
136 Chan, “What Roles For Ruins?,” 28. 
  77 
 
Design through Restoration 
 
Figure 48: Design through Restoration. Author. 
 Restoration of an urban wild may be chosen as a strategy if restoring the ecological 
functioning and original species composition of a site is of paramount importance. In this case, 
existing spontaneous vegetation is removed and the site is managed intensely to prevent 
recolonization by spontaneous plants, although native plants are usually allowed to grow without 
intervention. Cultural traces or artifacts (particularly industrial traces) are usually removed, as 
they often post-date the period of restoration. Site access or interactivity is largely regulated to 
allow preferred species to grow without hindrance from human activity, although this is not 
usually heavily enforced.  
The goal with this type of design is to intervene heavily on a site such that it can once 
more function (with continued maintenance) as a vegetatively wild space, but one with an 
“original” species composition and a successional trajectory favored by humans. There is debate 
about whether the action of restoration returns a site to first nature or whether it becomes another 
form of designed cultural or productive nature.  
While restoration is a valuable technique, it should be used carefully on urban wilds, as 
layers of history will be compressed and simplified. Restoration elevates one “golden era” of 
history (before human intervention) above all others, and casts human action as an entirely 
negative force.  
  78 
 
 
Design through Conservation 
 
Figure 49: Design through Conservation. Author. 
Design may create conservation areas from fourth nature, much like existing first nature 
conservation areas. This corresponds with Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury’s new conservation 
category of “Novel + wild + conservation”.137 In many traditional conservation areas, vegetation 
is allowed to grow freely, but human access and use is proscribed and controlled by limiting foot 
traffic to walkways and prohibiting interactive uses that might damage vegetation. In fact, nature 
conservation has come to see itself “primarily as a restraint, a containment, as a repression of 
‘unchecked’ human behavior, that only too obviously follows maxims [that describe humans as] 
separate from nature and enemies of nature”.138 As stated above, this is also true of restoration. 
The role of cultural artefacts is unclear in this type of intervention. Vegetation may be 
managed to a certain extent, as it is in first nature conservation areas, although the point of a 
fourth nature conservation area versus a restoration would be the retention of existing vegetation 
communities. With this type of strategy, there may not be enough design or maintenance activity 
to protect the site from the negative perceptions and processes listed in the first section of this 
                                                      
137 Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury, “Reconciling Conflicting Perspectives for Biodiversity Conservation in 
the Anthropocene.” 
138 Körner, “Nature Conservation, Forestry, Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation: Perspectives 
for a Conceptual Alliance,” 193. 
  79 
 
chapter. On the other hand, rare or threatened vegetation must be protected from human access in 
order to ensure its survival, and in this case it must be reinforced that specific areas are off-limits. 
While there is likely a role for landscape architects to create access trails or informational 
signs in these new conservation areas, it would probably be limited and straightforward, much 
like those in existing conservation areas. 
 
Design through Historic Preservation 
 
Figure 50: Design through Historic Preservation. Author. 
Historic preservation of a cultural site is a possible design strategy which is particularly 
useful for very important sites or relics which should be preserved so that important parts of 
history are not lost or forgotten. In these types of designs, cultural traces are preserved as they 
are, in some cases with limited design interventions to allow for visitor access. Vegetation 
growing on these traces is removed in order to prevent degradation or destruction and to clearly 
present the cultural artefacts. Visitor access is limited and clearly directed in order to prevent 
degradation of the site, and visitors are rarely allowed to interact directly with the sites in new and 
creative ways.  
Again, the focus is on preserving one aspect of the site to the detriment of all others and 
achieving a static, controllable state. Like the ecological restoration, this type of preservation 
values one period in history more than any other, causing a loss of historical complexity and 
  80 
 
ongoing interaction with the site. This type of design is best used when the urban wild is of 
extreme historical importance.  
 
Design through Hybridization 
 
Figure 51: Design through Hybridization. Author. 
When designs hybridize with urban wilds, all sliders stay to the middle or right of the 
scale, following the principle of the “smallest possible intervention.” This technique was used by 
Latz in his designs for Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord and Saarbrücken, was initially favored by 
Michel Corajoud in his design for Jardins d’Éole, and was also suggested by Chan, Kuhn, 
Jorgenson, and Armstrong.139 As we have seen earlier in this chapter, it is difficult for various 
reasons and not ideal in many situations to take a path of no intervention. Thus, this principle 
suggests that a designer enact the smallest possible intervention that will allow a site to reap the 
benefits of being designed or “improved.” The smallest “possible” (or practically 
feasible/advisable) intervention may vary from site to site depending on its context, history, and 
level of contamination. Heatherington identifies two design strategies which retain essential wild 
characteristics in all three categories. I discuss both in the following section.  
 
                                                      
139 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape, 115–16; Foster, “Spectral Denivelations,” 75; Chan, “What Roles For 
Ruins?,” 30; Kühn, “Intentions for the Unintentional,” 51; Jorgensen and Tylecote, “Ambivalent 
Landscapes,” 459; Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty.” 
  81 
 
Design through Time and Process 
 Some designers retain elements of uncertainty or wildness in their designs by prioritizing 
“process over a finished product, creating landscapes which are always in flux”.140 Because of 
this, there is the possibility for multiple “authors” and varied interpretations of the space. Design 
can be through ecological process, social process, and/or design process, allowing nature, users of 
a space, and designers to become authors of a shared work.  
Examples include Michel Desvigne’s master plan for the riverbanks of Bordeaux in 
which a tight grid of trees is planted as industrial lots become vacant and Marti Franch’s work in 
Girona, in which the city’s green infrastructure is designed through management. Franch’s is a 
strategy of subtraction and “confetti,” or small, irregular site interventions (sculptures, furniture, 
stumps for climbing) to remind visitors that the site is designed.141 
 Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände (Südgelände for short) is the best-studied park that 
fits within this category. Südgelände was formerly home to one of Berlin’s busiest rail 
switchyards and a railway workshop. It was located in West Berlin after the war, yet was owned 
by the East German railway company and was completely shut down in 1952. The approximately 
45-acre site lay unused and undeveloped for fifty years and developed unique vegetation 
communities. In 1980, Südgelände contained rare species and “about 334 species of ferns and 
flowering plants, about one-third of Berlin’s total,” including some plants of foreign origin. 
Foxes, falcons, a rare spider, and three new beetle species were discovered on the site.142  
 This site was transformed into a park for several reasons, which included the need for 
urban recreation space, the fact that the site was ecologically special, and a campaign that 
renamed and re-framed Berlin’s wasteland sites in order to give them new identities.143 Advocates 
created booklets and publications on site history and wrote descriptions in the form of itineraries 
                                                      
140 Heatherington, “Buried Narratives.” 
141 Waterman, “It’s About Time.” 
142 Lachmund, Greening Berlin, 166. 
143 Ibid. 
  82 
 
that took the reader on a virtual excursion. “By guiding visitors along a selected route, with stops 
at significant landmarks, and by means of verbal comments and clues, they helped draw the 
participants into a common aesthetic sensibility, which was at the same time visual, auditory, and 
corporeal”.144  
 In 1991, parties were finally in agreement about the development of the site into a park 
and two landscape planning offices were commissioned to create plans for the site. However, 
conflicts occurred between opposing goals of conservation and recreation, design aesthetics and 
ecology, and wildness and biodiversity. Designs proposed in response to a 2006 competition were 
harshly criticized by activists and ecologists; the winning design emphasized the park’s role as a 
stimulus for new development instead of focusing on the “myth of nature” or railway history. 
These conflicts were eventually worked out through the creation of a design/management 
framework “in which natural and social processes were partially controlled and partially left to 
their own dynamics. With this approach, different goals could be combined with one another”.145 
Within this framework, three types of spaces or “rooms” were created: 
1. Wild woods: Uncontrolled development of new wilderness is allowed without human 
influence on species composition. The spread of wild woods into other spaces is 
prevented through maintenance. Ecologists may study succession in these spaces. 
2. Clearings: Open landscapes are maintained and succession is controlled through 
mowing and grazing so that rare grassland species continue to flourish. Open areas 
allow the cultural remnants of railway uses to remain visible. 
3. Groves: Forest stands are maintained which are light and open. Attractive trees and 
stands are preserved and provide an aesthetically pleasing experience. 
These three types of rooms are linked through the addition of a new path system, which 
allows all visitors to experience the site. Free access is allowed over most of the site except the 8-
                                                      
144 Ibid., 171. 
145 Kowarik and Langer, “Natur-Park Südgelände,” 291. 
  83 
 
acre nature reserve, where foot traffic is limited to raised metal walkways in order to preserve the 
rare species. The old cultural layer in the form of railway relics was preserved, and in some cases 
restored, and a new cultural layer of art works has been established on site, which “present[s] a 
creative tension with the developing wilderness as well as with the relics of the railway”.146 
 
Figure 52: Images of Südgelände. From the German-language Wikimedia commons, CC license. Photo 
credits clockwise from top left: Babewyn, Hanson59, Membeth, Assenmacher, Hanson59 
Südgelände’s maintenance scheme was developed over time. Artists initially suggested 
that making decisions on which plants to remove was “a kind of fascism,” but ecologists 
                                                      
146 Ibid., 297. 
  84 
 
succeeded in convincing the public that maintenance was necessary. “It was throughout the 
practices of fixing and negotiating maintenance schemes that new boundaries between what was 
to be deemed as “natural” and “not natural” in these places were locally produced”.147  
The design and maintenance of wasteland parks was seen as an experiment and the 
beginning of maintenance activities occurred along with monitoring surveys, which were repeated 
regularly every year and sometimes led to adaptations or “calibrations” of maintenance 
schemes.148 Thus, Südgelände is designed through time and with time by prioritizing process, 
treating interventions as ecological and social experiments, and allowing nature, the historical 
past, and artists to become shared authors of a collective space. 
 
Design through Hybridized Texts 
 In this category, designers work with the existing ‘texts’ of site conditions such as 
vegetation and ruins, and interweave them with “texts” from elsewhere such as traditional garden 
design, art, and other forms of meaning. Visitors to the site participate in the unfolding of 
meaning and connect with the wider landscape. Desimini’s additions to the ‘natures enumerated’ 
theory fit into and subdivide this category.149 Fifth and sixth natures are, effectively, the 
hybridization of wild aspects of a site with agricultural/productive and cultural/third nature 
‘texts’, respectively. 
 Hybridization with Productive Nature 
 This category contains sites in which aspects of urban wilds are interwoven with aspects 
of productive second nature. Examples of this type include urban agriculture, agro-forestry, 
bioretention practices, and carbon sequestration coexisting with urban wilds. This corresponds 
with the new conservation type “Novel + designed + production,” with a goal of “coproduc[ing] 
                                                      
147 Lachmund, Greening Berlin, 188. 
148 Lachmund, Greening Berlin. 
149 Desimini, Jill, “Notions of Nature and a Model for Managed Urban Wilds.” 
  85 
 
biodiversity in cultural landscapes and on production land through biodiversity-friendly land use 
schemes”.150  
Fifth nature may be difficult to implement broadly on urban wilds and on this thesis site 
because of soil pollution or site contamination, although techniques may be available to address 
these challenges. However, some practices such as bioretention may play a part in the final 
design. Urban wild sites may be useful as phytoremediation plots (see Phyto by Kate Kennen and 
Niall Kirkwood for more information).  
Hybridization with Cultural Nature 
 This category contains sites where aspects of urban wilds are interwoven with aspects of 
cultural nature. This nature is a “reinvention of the urban park or garden, a designed landscape 
that does not cede ecosystem value and respects the realities of maintenance in the present urban 
economy.”151  
 The best-known example of an urban wild that has been designed with a strategy of 
hybridization with cultural nature is Landschaftspark-Duisburg Nord. The park is located in the 
Ruhr region of Germany, which has been intensely affected over the last two decades by 
deindustrialization. As part of a plan for managing this industrial decline, the blast furnace plant 
(closed in 1985) in Duisburg was re-imagined as a recreation area. Around 568 acres of post-
industrial site remained, “punctuated by large service areas, highly complex industrial plants, 
blast furnaces, turbines, cooling towers, ore bunkers, machine halls, foundries, gas tanks, storage 
areas, workshops, sewerage facilities, factory railways and roads”.152 The design competition for 
the park was discussed in a previous section. Latz’s competition entry, with its strategy of the 
“smallest possible intervention” was eventually chosen. 
                                                      
150 Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury, “Reconciling Conflicting Perspectives for Biodiversity Conservation in 
the Anthropocene.” 
151 Desimini, Jill, “Notions of Nature and a Model for Managed Urban Wilds,” 185. 
152 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape, 105. 
  86 
 
 Latz’s goal was to understand intimately the “existing entanglement of function and 
information layers in general, in order to work out how the industrial landscape organism, 
formerly so alive, used to function”.153 Latz is a proponent of intense and deep site analysis which 
is never complete. In this project, this strategy did not lead to a complete overall plan. In fact, 
“Latz + Partner never wanted to draw an overall plan for Duisburg-Nord, to avoid creating an 
impression of a complete and objective entity. They were much more concerned about linking 
independent structural layers in a process-driven approach”.154  
In Latz’ design, industrial-technological elements are intermixed with traditional garden 
elements. “Typical elements of idyllic cultural landscapes and gardens were incorporated within 
heavy industry context. A kind of cottage garden with boxwood… and hydrangeas was laid out in 
a former ore bunker”.155 Traditional elements included groves planted on a grid, allees, and 
columnar black locust trees planted on a former waste dump. Rubble was enhanced by blue sage 
and anthericum, and thanks to the juxtaposition, both were endowed with the same status.156  
 Spontaneous plants are also intermixed with traditional plantings in the park design. This 
creates a continuous process that blurs the line between systems authored by humans and non-
humans and leads to a “complex mosaic of different conditions” or “new and hybrid socio-
ecological assemblies”.157  
The park is free and is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. A few structures are marked 
as off-limits and fences were designed for particularly dangerous areas, but otherwise visitors are 
allowed to roam through the space.158 Graffiti is not removed, and small user-made structures and 
vegetable patches have popped up throughout the site. “Visitors and users become agents in the 
                                                      
153 Ibid., 114.  
154 Ibid., 111. 
155 Körner, “Nature Conservation, Forestry, Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation: Perspectives 
for a Conceptual Alliance,” 208. 
156 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape, 124. 
157 Langhorst, “Re-Presenting Transgressive Ecologies,” 1117–19. 
158 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape. 
  87 
 
ongoing change of the site, and not relegated to the role of passive consumer” Flexible and 
imaginative uses are tolerated and the park “does not feel over-programmed”.159  
 
Figure 53: Images of Duisburg-Nord. From Flickr, CC licenses. Photo credits clockwise from top left: 
duimdog, FotografieDanielZiegler, zoetnet, Carschten, Alexander Kaiser 
 
 The park is not a cultural or ecological restoration. While many people pushed for the 
naturalistic restoration of the “alte Emscher,” a dead-straight open sewage canal, the Latz team 
refused to transform the canal back into a meandering river. This decision was made partially 
                                                      
159 Langhorst, “Re-Presenting Transgressive Ecologies,” 1120. 
  88 
 
because the soil was extremely contaminated and water flow is limited, but they also wanted “to 
build the phase in which rivers were straightened into the park as a cultural phase”.160 This history 
of control or erasure is as important to Latz as all other histories that are commonly restored.  
 
Summary of Design Directives from Theory 
Principle of the ‘Smallest Possible Intervention’ 
• Designing emptiness or deciding where ‘nothing’ will go.161  
• Allowing temporary, spontaneous, or flexible uses.162  
• Subtraction and editing of the existing site.163 
• Applying ‘confetti,’ or sprinkling in small, irregular site activities.164 
Time and History 
• Treat ruins as historical evidence and only secondarily as aesthetic devices.165  
• Preserve ruins and historical evidence wherever possible. 
• The removal of historic traces or straightening of natural features is a part of history and 
should not be forgotten.166 
• Cultural ‘recycling,’ in which some traces are left intact and others are invested with new 
meaning, can “stimulate new readings of historical material”.167 
• Consider using time as a central organizing feature of urban wildscapes.168  
o Explore time and duration in “open and experimental ways”.169  
                                                      
160 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape, 129. 
161 Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty,” 124. 
162 Ibid., 123; Kullmann, “The Usefulness of Uselessness.” 
163 Waterman, “It’s About Time.” 
164 Ibid. 
165 Chan, “What Roles For Ruins?,” 30. 
166 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape, 129. 
167 Weilacher, Syntax of Landscape. 
168 Jorgensen and Tylecote, “Ambivalent Landscapes,” 459. 
169 Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty,” 121. 
  89 
 
o Explore the idea of “slow time,” or watching landscapes gradually change.170  
o Use the discovery of layers of time as a central theme to program sites.171 
Vegetation 
• “Cues to care” on site may lead to greater acceptance of wild parts of the site.172 
• Incorporate spontaneous vegetation into designs as a clue to site history and the “specific 
cultures of nature [that] have emerged over time”173  
• Protect rare or threatened vegetation from human access in order to ensure its survival. 
Access and Interactivity 
• Emphasize “acoustic, tactile, or olfactory texture of space rather than fleeting visual 
encounters,” which allow sensory immersion in nature.174  
• Refrain from ‘over-programming,’ which may reduce user creativity.175 
• Allow visitors maximum possible access to the site and allow/promote new uses. 
                                                      
170 Ibid., 122. 
171 Ibid., 117; Chan, “What Roles For Ruins?” 
172 Nassauer, “Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames”; Kühn, “Intentions for the Unintentional.” 
173 Gandy, “Marginalia.” 
174 Ibid., 1208. 
175 Armstrong, “Time, Dereliction, and Beauty”; Chan, “What Roles For Ruins?” 
  90 
 
Chapter 5: Design Methods 
Principles for Designing Urban Wilds 
In the last two chapters, I generated bulleted lists of design directions originating from 
the site analysis process and from an analysis of precedents and the theory. In this chapter, I 
discuss whether the overarching principle derived from the theory, that of the ‘smallest possible 
intervention,’ is applicable to this site or requires modification. Then, I discuss how to reconcile 
design directions originating from the theory and the site analysis goals, describe existing site 
characteristics which I take cues from in the design process, and discuss how art and 
programming can be used to meet the design goals. Then, I describe my initial process of 
design/concept development and show the resulting concept, which details where interventions 
will be placed on the site. 
 
Application of Theory of “Smallest Possible Intervention” to Thesis Site  
 
Using the overarching theory suggested by critics would lead me in the overall direction 
of the “smallest possible intervention.” Is this design method appropriate on this site? The two 
precedent sites, Südgelände and Duisburg-Nord, contain physical remnants of industrial and rail 
use as well as spontaneous vegetation. At Südgelände, various relics remain: the train tracks, the 
iconic water towers, a 4,000 square foot former locomotive hall, a locomotive, and track 
maintenance equipment. Duisburg-Nord contains an even larger assortment of urban relics: ore 
storage bunkers, the casting house, a blast furnace, an old gasometer, a blower house complex, 
and a switching house. 
These conditions vary significantly from the thesis site, where the only surviving relics 
are the topography and the industrial buildings in the Oakville Triangle. No tracks, ties, waiting 
sheds, trestles, poles, catenary wires, or other railway traces remain. The industrial buildings in 
  91 
 
Oakville Triangle are threatened by development and may soon disappear, leaving only the 
topography intact.  
A strategy of minimal intervention would have a very different effect on this site than on 
one with more intact historical remnants because there has already been significant intervention 
to remove historical traces on the thesis site. On such a site, this strategy of minimal intervention 
may lead to a loss of knowledge of site history and traces instead of their preservation. Scattered 
‘confetti’ interventions may not have enough of an impact in order for the site to reap the benefits 
of being designed. Thus, this site requires a modified approach. While certain areas may be 
minimally designed, others will require more intervention.  
 
Reconciling Design Directions from Site Analysis and Theory 
In some cases, design directives from the site analysis and theory align. For example, the 
site analysis directive of retaining enclosure in the southeastern segment of the site post-
development aligns with the theory directive suggesting the preservation of ruins and treating 
them as historical evidence. These can both be accomplished by retaining portions of the existing 
industrial building shells that sit on or adjacent to the site. 
 In some cases, the directives from the site analysis and theory appear to contradict each 
other and must be resolved. For example, the site analysis suggests that it is important to provide 
ADA access throughout the site, and the theory also suggests allowing maximum site access. 
However, the goals of minimal intervention and preservation of historic topographical traces 
suggest retaining the site as it is. In this case, it is possible for a bridge and cantilevered ramp to 
be built over portions of the site without major topographical disturbance. These directives, which 
seem to contradict each other, can be resolved through design. 
 In cases where interventions identified in the site analysis are necessary for safety, 
accessibility, or improved ecological functioning, they should override or be combined with 
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directives from the theory. For example, there are several hydrologic goals related to improving 
the function of the stream and urban vernal pools which require some intervention on the site but 
will provide a significant habitat and ecological benefit once complete.  
 
Additional Design Directives: Incorporating Existing Site Characteristics  
Early in the development of this thesis project, I began sketching out ideas for small and 
tactical interventions related to the materiality of the existing site. Since the park is mostly edge, I 
was particularly interested in semipermeable gateways/thresholds which would clearly demarcate 
the transition from one space to another while allowing sightlines and multiple exit routes for 
safety. I also became interested in the idea of removing or excising pieces of structures in order to 
add meaning through the process of subtraction. ‘De-paving’ was of interest; particularly artful 
methods for facilitating the decay of asphalt or transformation to a space which hosted 
spontaneous plants. I sketched vignettes which addressed ways to adapt and remix existing and 
past visual/ecological site characteristics, which included: 
• The tendency of vegetation to grow along fencelines and mark the locations of ‘ghost’ 
fences long after they had been removed.  
• The experience of moving through a sequence of site ‘rooms’ defined by ‘ghost’ fences. 
• The discontinuation of mowing at different times, leading to varied vegetation stand ages. 
• Spur and secondary paths winding through tall grasses and spontaneous vegetation. 
• Mounds existing on an otherwise flat portion of the site. 
• Remnants of site history in the form of I-beams and rail segments on site edges. 
• “Banal” construction materials including chain-link, asphalt, concrete gutter and inlets. 
• Historic materials which had been removed such as catenary poles, wires, and tracks. 
 
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Figure 55: Boxcar converted to an electric engine, 
193-. Courtesy of the Fairfax County Public 
Library. 
 
Figure 54: Existing site conditions. Clockwise from top left: steel I-beams, vegetation along former 
fenceline defines a ‘room’, chain-link fence and asphalt lot with storm drains, remaining rail segments in a 
ditch, secondary path through tall grasses, gentle mound on otherwise flat portion of site. Author.  
 
Figure 56: Tracks at Purcellville, VA after 
abandonment, 1968. Courtesy of the Fairfax 
County Public Library. 
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Figure 57: Concrete pipe & hedge threshold and manipulating vegetation through ‘fence mazes’ 
 
 
Figure 58: Catenary gate and sculptural chain-link threshold  
 
 
Figure 59: Paving/de-paving studies and mound field 
 
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Figure 60: Drain fountains and design through subtraction on an existing wall 
These sketches helped me visualize what was important about the existing site and how 
design could act on these spaces. I was interested in creating new experiences which recalled and 
expanded those existing on the site, added a new layer of meaning, or provoked unexpected 
reflections on the typical infrastructure of urban life. 
 
Programming the Site 
An overview of the best methods for programming and artistic additions on urban wild 
sites is missing from the literature I have reviewed, although some authors discussed tactics 
which were used on particular sites. It is possible that I simply did not come across this 
information in my search. Given a longer timeframe, I would be able to investigate this question 
more thoroughly, as it is an important aspect of design. 
One author does suggest that designers refrain from “over-programming” an urban wild, 
which may reduce user creativity,176 and another suggests emphasizing the “acoustic, tactile, or 
olfactory texture of space rather than fleeting visual encounters”,177 however, the question 
remains of how to ‘jump-start’ creativity or show that it is allowed in a space where users may be 
hesitant to do activities out of the norm. At Südgelände, the design moved forward from deadlock 
                                                      
176 Chan, “What Roles For Ruins?” 
177 Gandy, “Marginalia.” 
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only when a group of metal sculpture artists, who had their workshop in an old railway shed at 
the site, proposed a ‘walkable sculpture’ made from rusty steel.178 This tactic of design generated 
by users of the space may prove useful. Sheridan suggests mobile, incremental and temporary 
strategies which are reversible and allow “structures, uses, and interventions to occur outside the 
more stringent regulatory requirements of permanent architecture”.179  
It seems possible that workshop-based or tactical programming could introduce visitors to 
alternative site uses and support the creation of art forms which could then be located on the site. 
Interventions such as a community maker space in the former industrial building could facilitate 
this process of user generation, as could the addition of boxcar artist studios. Workshops or 
classes could teach found or nature art, sculpture, and more. 
Temporary or pop-up uses and activities might also include a hammock grove where 
users can bring their own hammocks and slacklines, a bouldering wall installed on part of the 
existing concrete walls, slides on a steep slope, and free-form dirt ‘play mounds.’ Unconventional 
interpretive signs could ‘frame’ parts of the site and ask open-ended questions which may 
provoke visitors to conceptualize the ecology and history of the site in new ways. 
 Workshops and meetups could also include those focused on the nature of the site, 
including ecological processes, animal and plant observation and identification (birding, plant ID, 
sketching), and harvesting and processing of mulberries or other plants (after determined to be 
safe for consumption). A community maintenance and vegetation monitoring project could be 
initiated from the community maker space, with regular vine-pulling days scheduled.  
 
Concept Development 
 The theory almost exclusively discusses the design of urban wilds which contain intact 
traces. Because I needed to add reconstructed traces and more ‘designed’ spaces, I needed to 
                                                      
178 Lachmund, Greening Berlin, 185. 
179 Sheridan, “Disordering Public Space: Urban Wildscape Processes in Practice,” 206. 
  97 
 
come up with a strategy or concept to locate these on the site. I began by taking note of the design 
directions suggested by the theory and investigating the idea of time and history, including linear 
time, circular time, “railroad time” and the standardization of time. Analog clock faces resemble 
roundhouses, and circles can denote nodes, as in Kullmann’s ‘stage’ typology. I struggled with an 
organizing strategy for this time-based investigation, considering and then discarding the idea of 
creating a “trip through history” for the northwestern part of the site. I considered whether the 
levels of intervention in terms of vegetation, history, hydrology, sculpture, and interactivity 
should remain constant or change along the site. 
 
Figure 61: Breakthrough in visualizing the site as a whole 
 
 
Figure 62: Exploring categories of addition and subtraction on the site 
 
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Figure 63: Developing concept of linear 'stops' on different ‘tracks’ 
 
 
Figure 64: Refining concept; development of aligned 'stations' 
 
After many concept iterations, some of which are shown above, I developed the idea of a 
linear site with programmatic ‘stops,’ which echo the stops on a railway line and also the stopped 
time of a watch. At a train stop, the landscape, which is blurred and only accessible visually while 
en route, becomes a place to arrive, depart, and interact with.  
In this strategy, there are five categories of programmatic stops, or ‘tracks’: history, 
activity, vegetation, sculpture, and hydrology. For example, on the history track, there are stops at 
reproduction waiting sheds and the industrial buildings. Sculptural and artistic elements 
throughout the park consist of stops on the sculptural track. A seasonal activity such as mulberry 
harvesting might consist of a simultaneous stop on both the activity and vegetation tracks. These 
stops are small, confetti interventions throughout the park, in line with the principle of minimal 
intervention. Each track is independent of the others, and visitors may choose their own itinerary 
by following a single track of interest or switching from one line to another.  
Initially, all stops on the site were equally sized, with similar amounts of intervention at 
each. However, I received the feedback that there was too much going on in a relatively small 
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space and I needed to pare down the design. After some thought, I came up with the distinction 
between stops, which are small pauses or points of interest along a single track, and ‘stations,’ 
which are nodes where three or more stops align. Stations provide larger gathering spaces, novel 
uses, and artful re-interpretations of site history. This station typology corresponds with 
Kullman’s ‘stage’ typology, or a “central spine of sequential ‘landing sites’ that host both 
spontaneous and premeditated events”.180  
The ‘tracks’ shown on the concept diagrams are conceptual linkages between activity 
types. On the ground, both stops and stations are enveloped by a matrix of spontaneous 
vegetation and linked by a network of paths. This vegetation, the ‘thicket’ of Kullmann’s 
typology, will be managed to provide the maximum possible plant and habitat diversity. 
 
Figure 65: Initial typology diagram: ‘Stops and Spontaneous Vegetation’ 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                      
180 Kullmann, “Thin Parks / Thick Edges.” 
  100 
 
 
Figure 66: Sketch of more intensive design possibilities for a concrete wall at a ‘station’ 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Figure 67: Stops and stations aligned conceptually on thesis site 
  101 
 
Chapter 6: Design 
The initial design was completed very quickly and rendered in time for my thesis 
defense. After the defense, my committee rightly noted that the design seemed like it had been 
thrown together. They asked me to clarify and justify the ways in which the design stemmed from 
the site analysis, the literature review, and the concept development. I was also asked to re-
examine other aspects of the design, including the size of the ‘stations,’ the types of interventions 
and activities proposed, and the ecological connectivity and patch size. 
 
Figure 67: Initial rendered design presented at defense. 
 
 
 
 
  102 
 
 
Figure 69: Presentation graphic of a 'station' containing a beer garden and bouldering barn. My committee 
suggested I reconsider these uses, as they did not seem to stem from the existing site or from site history 
and instead seemed to cater to the new development across the street. 
 
 The committee suggested that my design was too segmented, but as I revisited the 
directives from the site analysis, the literature review, and the existing site conditions, I realized 
that the existing segmentation of the site into ‘rooms’ was important in creating the character of 
the site. Currently, the site is segmented by lines of vegetation. These lines interact with travel 
along the site in three ways: perpendicular at former fencelines, parallel along current fencelines 
or building edges, and parallel on steep banks adjacent to the rail bed. The experience of moving 
through the site is similarly broken up: after moving through an impenetrable thicket, you may 
then come upon a field or meadow where space opens up considerably. I began to wonder if my 
initial design was not too segmented, but segmented without a guiding purpose or reason. 
  103 
 
 
Figure 70: Diagram showing location of current fenceline/wall vegetation (green), vegetation along former 
fencelines (dashed green) and vegetation on embankments (yellow-green). 
 
Figure 71: Sketchbook diagram of experience walking through the southeastern part of site. Not to scale. 
 
 The northwestern portion of the site is not segmented by vegetation nearly as much as the 
southeastern portion, and I would suggest that this is part of the reason why it is less magical. 
Being able to see through the entire site means that there is no mystery about what lies just 
beyond a line of trees and there is no sequential experience of shadow and light. After I spent 
some time drafting a revised design for the site, I sat down and drew what I had done, which was 
an addition to my previous typology of ‘stops’ and ‘thickets’. Lines of fencerow vegetation define 
‘rooms’ which can be filled with stops, stations, or simply thickets and paths. On this site, the 
fencerows ended up being at an angle in many cases because of the angle at which the 
surrounding neighborhood and industrial buildings were constructed. 
 
Figure 72: New typology diagram with fencerows of vegetation creating 'rooms' to hold stops, stations, and 
thickets. 
  104 
 
 
Figure 73: Revised site plan- entire 
  105 
 
Figure 74: Northwest segment of thesis site. 
Description of Design Section by Section 
Boxcar Meadows: 
Figure 75: Section through northwest segment of thesis site with boxcar and waiting shed. 
The northwestern-most park section contains a ‘station’ with a real train consisting of 
boxcars turned into artist studios, reinstated track, a picnic shelter reconstructed based on historic 
photos of a former waiting shed, and a picnic area. A ‘viewing cage’ sculpture formed from bent 
rails located where the tracks used to extend over Commonwealth Avenue on a bridge allows 
visitors to stop and imagine the past and future views from the site. Along Commonwealth Ave, a 
sculpture of blue crushed glass and concrete pipes along with interpretive signage reminds 
visitors of the stream which used to run through Del Ray but has now been piped underground.  
A new line of trees splits this section of the site in two. Additional trees along the existing 
fencelines are recruited by the cessation of mowing on the steep slope southwest of the train cars 
and within five feet of site boundaries. Hydrology has been improved in this section through the 
addition of a bioretention swale on the southeastern side. The northeastern swale and a significant 
portion of this area has been seeded and allowed to grow into a novel urban meadow, which is 
  106 
 
mowed once a year for maintenance and contributes greatly to the biodiversity in the surrounding 
area, as there are very few meadows. Paths and sitting areas are cut into this meadow, which 
symbolically breaks up the train tracks to show the passage of time and removal of traces. 
 
Rolling Stock: 
Figure 76: Segment of site showing meadow, play boxcars and mounds, and waiting shed bathroom. 
 
Figure 77: Section with mowed meadow path and fenceline vegetation. 
The northwestern (left-most) of these two sections continues the meadow with winding 
paths seen in the previous section. Where these two sections exit onto the street, ‘catenary gates’ 
are sited. This meadow can also host rotating sculptures made by the artists in the ‘maker barn’ to 
the southeast. The southeastern (right-most) of these two sections contains a ‘play station’ with 
two more boxcars used as play structures as part of a ‘deconstructed playground’ located here in 
place of the existing prefabricated play structure. Swings attached to tree branches are also dotted 
  107 
 
through this area, and the additional lot has been used for dirt play mounds with a water source 
where children can dig and construct landscapes. Another former waiting shed is reconstructed 
here, although this one is used for park bathrooms. Runoff is better-managed on these two 
sections through the addition of two new bioinfiltration swales on the southeastern edge of the 
park. 
 
De-Railing Zone: 
Figure 78: Segment of site showing wetland, bridge, hammocks, and slides. 
 
Figure 79: Section through site showing wetland and bridge. 
Across Raymond Ave., the existing seasonal wetland is improved through plant 
additions. The path here moves off of the former trackbed and up onto the higher bank to avoid 
being flooded in rainy weather. A bridge across this depression leads to Calvert St. and the new 
development, with a new line of trees following the bridge. On the other side of the bridge is 
  108 
 
another ‘station,’ with hammocks, art fences made from rails, and a graffiti wall on the concrete 
wall retained from the former industrial building. Slides also run through this wall. Where the 
topography levels out, the path rejoins with a former track in a meadow. 
 
Figure 80: Section showing meadow vegetation and hammocks and slides beyond. 
 
Figure 81: Figure 85: Perspective of graffiti wall ‘station.’ 
 
 
  109 
 
Fabrication Station: 
 
Figure 82: Segment of site showing concrete pipe gates, reinstated rail paths, the maker shed/fabrication 
station, and the maker yard. 
 
On the other side of an existing fenceline, paths weave around meadow plantings, which 
obscure and then reveal the rails. In this section, a concrete pipe gate filters the view from those 
in the plaza across the street and creates a unique entry experience.  
Past another existing fenceline, reconstructed tracks run toward the existing industrial 
building, which will be used as a maker barn and host art, sculpture, and how-to classes. In this 
area, a bioretention swale replaces the existing concrete channel liner on the southeastern edge of 
the park. Past the maker barn, a sculpture yard in the current parking lot allows the creation of 
large outdoor sculptures, and holes cut into the pavement allow for a maze of grasses to grow up.  
On the southeastern side is the first of four experimental management sections which 
allow park visitors to experience the change of vegetation over time. Every five years, the oldest 
of these sections is cut, meaning that vegetation in each section has time to grow for 20 years 
  110 
 
before it is cut. Interpretive signage will explain this rotating experience to park visitors. 
 
Figure 83: Section through site showing fabrication station, yard, and new development. 
 
Trestle Heights: 
 
 
Figure 84: Southeastern end of thesis site. 
 
Figure 85: Section through Trestle Heights. 
  111 
 
 
On the far southeastern part of the park, the topography becomes very prominent. Two 
paths connect the new development to the ridge path, one of which follows the line of a former 
rail spur. A regenerative stormwater conveyance will handle the runoff from the existing pipe, 
slow it, and improve water quality. The existing forest remains on the northeastern slope in this 
area, but an ADA access path runs on an elevated walk under this canopy and along the stream. 
The existing triangle of unused space between two industrial buildings is turned into another 
art/play yard and is connected to the ridge path through stairs and a slide. This section of the park 
also terminates in an overlook made from rails bent into a viewing cage and interpretive signage 
of the historic view over Potomac Yards. 
 
Figure 86: Section-perspective of park entry on southeast end. ADA entrance is to the right; viewing 
sculpture made from rail is atop the hill. 
  
  112 
 
Chapter 7: Conclusion 
This thesis investigated urban wilds in relation to other urban natures and explored 
typologies of urban wild sites within cities. I collected the terms I encountered for these sites, 
classified them, explored their meanings, and chose one to use in this thesis. While some terms do 
have meaningful distinctions, such a proliferation of terms is unnecessary and detrimental to the 
accumulation of knowledge within the field. Positive and negative social and ecological 
implications of these sites were then discussed. 
I investigated the literature in order to answer the research question of how designers can 
act upon these sites in order to provide the social, environmental, and artistic benefits of being 
‘designed’ without destroying existing vegetative wildness and historical traces. Most design 
suggestions lie along three axes: history, vegetation, and access/interactivity, along with a general 
principle of ‘minimal intervention.’ Designs can be classified by their level of intervention in 
each category, leading to types including erasure, mimicry, restoration, conservation, historic 
preservation, and hybridization. Each of these strategies may be appropriate on portions of sites 
given certain existing conditions, but an overall strategy of hybridization is likely to be the most 
successful in achieving the research goal. 
After a lengthy site analysis process, I discussed how best to combine design directives 
from the research with those from the site analysis, finding that sometimes directives which 
seemed to be at odds with each other could be resolved through design. In other cases, safety or 
environmental goals took precedence over theoretical goals. I attempted to apply what I had 
learned in designing the thesis site, however, time limitations meant that the design investigation 
was not as thorough as I had initially intended. 
 As a thesis project, there is necessarily more research and design activity which might be 
pursued on this topic. I hope to continue exploring the design and programming of urban wilds in 
my future work. There are some unanswered questions which I unearthed in the process of 
  113 
 
completing this thesis. A comparison of how other designers have programmed hybridized sites 
would be valuable, as would an investigation of the portrayal of ruderal or spontaneous 
vegetation within landscape architecture. I was steered away from an investigation of the public 
perception of urban wilds due to the time constraints inherent in the thesis project, but one of my 
initial research questions was about how to shift public perception of these sites. I am aware that 
there is a significant amount of research on this topic, and I intend to investigate it in the future. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
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