Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, FEATURES, PARKS, PLANNING, PRACTICE, REGION, RESILIENCE, STREETS, TRANSLATED, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged Ambos Nogales, Arizona, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Arizona State University, arroyo, Arroyo Cuesta Blanca Green Development, Arroyo de los Nogales, Ben Lomeli, bioswales, Border Wall, Channel, City of Green Creeks, Claudia Gil, created wetlands, creeks, development, ECOLOGY, El Nogal Regional Park, El Ranchito de los Aliso, Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, flooding, Francisco Lara-Valencia, Friends of the Santa Cruz River, Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, green corridors, green infrastructure, GREEN ROOFS, Instituto Municipal de Investigación y Planeación, international, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Laura Norman, Lisa Owens Viani, Mexico, Nogales, Parque Nuevo Nogales, Paseo de Los Nogales, permeable paver, permeable pavers, rain gardens, restored creeks, riparian habitat, Santa Cruz River, School of Transborder Studies, Seeds/Semillas, sewage, Sonoran desert, stormwater, STREETS, terraced gabion structures, trade, tributary, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Border 2020, U.S. Geological Survey, University of Arkansas, urbanization, Water, watershed on November 14, 2019|
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As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.
BY LISA OWENS VIANI
Named for the walnut trees that used to line its banks, the Arroyo de los Nogales, a tributary of the Santa Cruz River, flows from south to north, descending from the high Sonoran desert in Mexico into Arizona. The main arroyo and its many smaller tributaries form a watershed, shaped roughly like a human heart, that is broken in two by the U.S.–Mexico border wall. Facing each other across the wall, in the river’s floodplain, are two cities, each named Nogales, that share social and environmental problems—including repeated flooding caused by rapid urbanization, ineffective flood control efforts, and the border wall itself.
Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, ASLA, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, and Francisco Lara-Valencia, an associate professor at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, have a greener vision for these border cities (together called Ambos Nogales), whose streets and arroyos often run brown with sediment and sewage in heavy storms. Díaz Montemayor and Lara-Valencia want to increase permeability throughout the watershed, slow peak flows in heavy storms, and develop more ecological connectivity between the two cities, despite the dividing presence of the wall.
They hope their ideas for an extensive network of green infrastructure can transform the way the cities develop, not only to improve water quality and flood management but also to provide more green space for residents. As the cities have grown, impervious surfaces have too, destroying natural areas. Both cities lack green space: There is just 1.1 square meter per person in Nogales, Mexico, and only 2.2 square meters per person on the U.S. side, Lara-Valencia says.
“We are not saying development shouldn’t happen,” Díaz Montemayor says. “We’re saying, ‘Let’s provide a structure for that development to happen [that] is based on natural systems.’” (more…)
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