from Delta Primer by Jane Wolff The Delta, where the Great Central Valley drains into San Francisco Bay, is the largest tidal estuary on the West Coast. It was transformed from marshland to farmland 150 years ago, and the intersection of fluctuating natural processes and expanding cultural demands have made it into a strange hybrid: still an agricultural landscape, it has also become the protected habitat of endangered species, the backyard of an intense ring of urban development, and the centerpiece of the vast system that delivers water to Southern California. Delta Primer, intended to make the particular circumstances of the Delta vivid for broad audiences, includes maps, photographs, a brief history, and a lexicon. It is organized around a standard deck of playing cards: four suits, thirteen cards each, ranked from ace to king. The suits represent four ways of understanding the landscape: as a garden, as a machine, as a wilderness, and as a toy. The cards describe artifacts, practices, and processes that belong to and shed light on those categories. Rank depends on the scale of the card’s subject. Four wild cards comprise a panorama of the future. Think of the questions that govern a game of cards. Who holds what? Who wants what? What are the terms of exchange, and what’s the value of any given trade? Those dilemmas aren’t so far from the ones at play in the contested landscape of the Delta.
Check out the whole thing in the current issue. Jane Wolff is a landscape designer in San Francisco. These excerpts are from a book she wrote and designed, with drawings by the author and Thomas Hansen, to be published this fall by William Stout Publishers, San Francisco. E-mail: Wolff@architecture.wustl.edu |