REFRAMING WALLER CREEK: Landscape as an Agent of Urban Change

By the 1990s, concern about rapid urban growth had begun to shape landscape discourse in the United States. In response, landscape design increasingly restructured parts of cities where urban form intersected with waterways, layering large-scale water management infrastructures with recreational features—an approach that became central to what is now called Landscape Urbanism. These hybrid spaces, combining habitat, hardscape, and infrastructure, gave rise to new public expectations for urban experiences and biophysical engagement, as seen in cities from Los Angeles to Baltimore. While landscape urbanism has been interpreted in complex theoretical terms, it often flattens the dynamic interactions between people, non-human actants, and ecological systems into abstract ontologies. This chapter challenges such interpretations by examining Waller Creek in Austin, Texas, as a response to public demands for inclusive, multifunctional urban landscapes. It traces how the creek evolved from a marginal urban edge into a recreation network, development catalyst, and ecological infrastructure—while also confronting the histories of displacement embedded in its transformation.