Abstract
“It’s just an urban stream,” said the engineering consultant, responding to my request to vegetate the channel rather than line it with plastic geogrid. We are taught that restoring ecologically functioning urban streams and rivers is not possible, based on the belief that urban watersheds are too degraded and their landscapes too altered to support naturally functioning systems. Restoring urban streams and rivers is also not possible, we are told, because it is prohibitively expensive to practice ecological restoration in a setting where land is expensive and other land uses are valued more highly than streams. Restoration is not possible, the argument continues, because the public will not accept the flood and erosion hazards associated with uncontrolled dynamic natural streams in the interiors of cities.
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© 2016 Ann Riley
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Riley, A.L. (2016). Is The Restoration of Urban Streams Possible?. In: Restoring Neighborhood Streams. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-741-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-741-4_1
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