ABSTRACT
Water is the base element that sets landscapes in motion, making them feel alive and infusing them with poetry. Water used to be treated as an essential element, as an important part of our communities. Water is precious, but what have we done to it? We started to strangle it in the past century; we turned it into channels; we tried to make it an evil; we treated it with neglect. In short, we have treated our landscapes as waste receptacles, dumping water out of pipes and creating eroded hillsides. And we insist upon burying water underneath roadways wide enough to land airplanes on. We need to stop making the car the prime factor driving community planning. No more should the žrst questions in planning meetings be about how much parking or how many streets there will be.
