Transforming the Urban Landscape - LARP 601

URBAN NATURE - GEOLOGY

This is a project our studio did in groups earlier in the semester as a way to get a 'feel' for our West Philly site.

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MILL CREEK GEOLOGY

Mill Creek lies on a wide, gentle, eastern-facing slope of Pennsylvania's "Piedmont" mountain formation. Piedmont is composed mainly of schist and phyllite--rocks that were once part of sea-floor muds but which have been compressed and folded over the early North American continent to produce mountains. Schist is a hard rock that contains many good minerals necessary for plants, but because of its strength releases them only slowly over time as an effect of weathering and erosion.

Wissahikon schist--the variety in this area--is responsible for dense Pennsylvania forests. Outside of urban areas, 'Central' hardwoods dominate in this part of the state: oaks, maples, birches, and hickories. The soil of these forests should be slightly acidic, though a rich silt-loam; and generally well-drained.

The Mill Creekcommunity, like the rest of West Philadelphia, is a vessel plotting across a sea of time. The factors for its coming into existence, the selection of its terrain, and the course of its spatial development is owed in part to geologic events that occurred thousands, even millions of years ago. Mill Creek structures--its houses, buildings, and streets--and Mill Creek people depend for their continued surety upon the nature of the rocky soil and strata below them. They owe their fortune, their safety and their comfort to the careful maintenance of the area's watershed and the buried underground river that runs through their community. There is no place on earth that does not alter in some way over time--but Mill Creek may look forward to a long, secure existence by understanding and cooperating with the geologic influences that shape its region.

Web Links

• WPLP
  
• Urban Nature
  
• Urban Nature -Water
  
• Urban Nature - Geology
  
• Urban Nature - Topography
  
• Urban Nature - Vegetation
  
  
  
  
• U.S. Geological Survey
  
  
  
  
• DESCRIBING THE PLACE

This page is maintained by Christopher Hickin at the Graduate School of Fine Arts
Please mail any comments to: christo2@dolphin.upenn.edu

Last Update:11/27/96