Located in an abandoned railyard within New Orleans' Lafitte corridor, the site is an in-between, a non-space, a vague terrain, neither a part of the surrounding neighborhoods nor able to sustain the role it once held for the economic and social vitality of the city. As it currently exists, it is seemingly void and lifeless. The project attempts to give new meaning to this liminal space, re-envisioning the role of a former industrial corridor as an urban stormwater park.

This project identifies three types of flux as a means for identifying a site within the context of a larger city, negotiating boundaries and edges to develop a design strategy that responds to the cultural, social, political and ecological pasts and future of this new urban space. The MidCity Stormwater Park illustrates that social space can function as flexible infrastructure, providing an alternative to the traditional and taxed water infrastructure systems of the city of New Orleans.

Water in New Orleans is a paradox, both sustaining and potentially destroying the city in one fell swoop. Historically, the city's hydraulic endeavors have attempted to subjugate the natural flows of water in this deltaic plain, using huge infrastructural feats to combat the threat of flood. Many of the social, economic, and infrastructural challenges that the MidCity neighborhood faces are tied to the city's struggle to keep New Orleans afloat. The pumping of ground and storm water in New Orleans has lead not only to ground subsidence but continues to be a significant economic drain on the city. With these challenges in mind, there is an opportunity to rethink the city's current drainage infrastructure and to focus on the cultural and functional aspects of water in MidCity, the Lafitte Corridor and New Orleans as a whole.

The Lafitte corridor is traditionally defined as the site of the former Carondelet Canal and the Norfolk Southern rail line, extending three miles from the edge of the French Quarter to the Lakeview neighborhood bordering Lake Ponchartrain. In its heyday, the Lafitte Corridor was one of the earliest locations in the New Orleans community where residents could experience public and private outdoor space created for recreation and leisure. Unfortunately, today, the Lafitte Corridor is nothing more than an underutilized post-industrial site. While the corridor was largely derelict far before the complications of Hurricane Katrina revealed the shortcomings of the city's infrastructure systems, the adjacent neighborhoods have maintained, if not responded remarkably well, to the surrounding challenges. In fact, the post-Katrina return rates for the MidCity neighborhood total about 70% which is significantly higher than most New Orleans neighborhoods.

In this proposal, the MidCity Stormwater Park would alleviate pressure on the existing drainage system by day-lighting the drainage canal that runs from the French Quarter along Lafitte Street at North Jefferson Davis Parkway. Allowing the Park to serve as the primary drainage system, the current system would be maintained to serve as backup during large storm events. The Park would create a network of "urban wetlands" that would allow for flooding during times of high water volume. Creating a floodable landscape in MidCity could contribute to an overall strategy for the city to manage stormwater and subsidence by establishing a more permeable landscape.

Addressing the issue of water as one of both cultural and functional importance, the MidCity Stormwater Park revitalizes an existing and underutilized public space by re-establishing the economic and cultural importance of the land and water. Obliging social space to double as flexible infrastructure, the park engages the surrounding communities with the water that defines their city, and by doing so blurs the boundaries that currently separates them from each other.

This new social infrastructure sets forth a dynamic spatial framework that will grow and morph. By engaging this liminal space, matrices of circulation, seasonality, habitat and social patterning begin to overlap. This is a prescriptive and responsive flux, a choreography of space and flow that becomes a strategy for fostering positive urban growth and a new landscape identity.