ABSTRACT
The Mill Creek neighbourhood of West Philadelphia is a place of many puzzles. Within its street grid of three-storey brick rowhouses with small porches, are other types of dwellings: a Georgian mansion, single-family homes on large lots, tiny rowhouses with no yard and tall towers of concrete. The landscape of Mill Creek is a catalogue of the failures of 20th-century urban policy, planning and design. Some policies and projects were deliberate and insidious in their effects; most were well-intentioned but misguided. The urban landscape is shaped by rain, plants and animals, human hands and minds. Rain falls, carving valleys and soaking soil. People mould landscape with hands, tools and machines, through law, public policy, the investing and withholding of capital, and other actions undertaken hundreds or thousands of miles away.
