unearthing distrust — ryan karczewski

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+1 (813) 486-1719
karczewskiryan@gmail.com

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unearthing distrust

The Flint River Watershed spans 1,358 square miles across seven Eastern Michigan counties, providing essential ecological, recreational, and economic benefits. However, it has faced severe pollution, industrial decline, and the Flint Water Crisis, highlighting the need to rebuild trust within its communities. Named “River of Stone and Fire” (Pewonigowink in Anishinaabemowin), the river originates in Columbiaville, where its North and South tributaries converge. Historically, the region featured hardwood forests and wetlands, home to Indigenous tribes. Colonists displaced these populations, exploiting the area for logging and later automotive industries. Dependence on these industries led to economic decline after production was outsourced. Flint’s challenges deepened with redlining, which displaced Black residents for urban renewal, and the Water Crisis, during which government failures disproportionately harmed marginalized communities. Today, efforts focus on restoring environmental balance and fostering sustainable practices that benefit both residents and natural systems.

We seek to utilize this room for reconsideration of the region’s environmental practices and work to expand the rights of nature within the watershed, allowing us to re-earth trust throughout the region. Our scope explores the watershed's boundaries, as opposed to those of municipal jurisdictions. Allowing us to understand the causes and effects associated with design interventions explored past and present. Moving away from zones of extractive processes, enables us to focus on interventions that exist throughout a watershed system, and act in tandem with one another to provide lasting benefits to communities and their natural environments.

Therefore, we must first begin to heal… Restoring the Flint River requires balancing natural processes with human habitation, and acknowledging the interconnectedness of ecological, hydrological, and social networks. The fragmented watershed, marked by residential developments, state-managed lands, and flood-prone areas, offers opportunities for collaborative restoration between humans and nature. Our proposed intervention begins with beaver dam analogs (BDAs), which are engineered structures that mimic natural dams, encouraging wetland expansion and inviting beavers back to the landscape. These BDAs slow water flow, capture nutrients and create conditions for natural regeneration across public, private, and state-owned lands. Over time, reestablished beaver colonies amplify these efforts, raising water tables, and reducing runoff. As wetlands and riparian habitats flourish, the Flint River becomes a resilient ecosystem shaped by collaboration, restoring balance and healing the headwaters.

We can then begin to reconnect… With a focus on community, we examine Flint’s neighborhoods near downtown, where industrial storage sites and vacant properties dominate the landscape. These sparsely populated areas house vibrant yet disconnected communities, with vacant lots serving as reminders of what once existed. However, these conditions offer opportunities to repurpose land for community land trusts (CLTs), environmental growth, and neighborhood hubs. By consolidating vacant lands and redeveloping abandoned properties, CLTs can foster stronger connections among residents. Additionally, integrating these spaces into an expanded wetland system linked to the Flint River can reconnect communities to their natural surroundings, offering direct access and fostering a deeper bond with the environment and the communities that exist within it.

Lastly, we must work to cooperate… The existing downtown area of Flint highlights a detached channelized river, and large impervious urban networks, that emerged due to fragmented jurisdictions, which has overshadowed the holistic existence of these fragmented habitats. Unearthing these zones for implementation of ecological regulations along the river's proximity fosters cooperation with natural features that detain and treat stormwater. The redesigning of parking lots and transforming urban surfaces emphasize opportunities for cooperation to support urban metabolism. Territorial cooperation as a culture portrays the social and cultural fabric. This vision emphasizes a cohesive downtown, built around shared stewardship and hydrological processes, particularly stormwater management at the source.

Healing The Flint River Watershed requires warping across scales of place and time, our efforts resist fragmentation, transforming crisis into opportunities for trust and cooperation. These actions create a generative, multi-generational shift toward a future where a collective exist, flourish, and evolve.

This project worked in partnership with David Vega + Aditi Verma.

midterm video

final video