Giving Compass' Take:

• Jenny Hoffner, writing for Nonprofit Quarterly, explores the four critical components for urban river conservation. 

• How so urban rivers impact the communities around them? 

• Read about the benefits of prioritizing healthy rivers. 

Sometimes, if you listen close, you can hear the creeks running in storm drains under our feet. Occasionally, you can even see them.

Many of our world’s modern urban rivers are hidden, a place apart. They are forgotten spaces and, given their anonymity, they sometimes coexist unknown and protected. More commonly, they are abused, polluted, and compromised due to a lack of love and stewardship. Often, they hide in pipes under parking lots, streets, and highways.

Urban rivers that have been forgotten or buried underground for years often wind their way through neighborhoods that also have been forgotten, marginalized, or intentionally burdened with infrastructure like landfills, power plants, and sports arenas that damage the quality of life for residents.

For example, in and around the busiest airport in the world, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, the Flint River can be found running through pipes under parking lots and runways. Many of the neighborhoods that once stood there, and the people who once called those neighborhoods home, are long gone, bought out in favor of airport expansion.

Until we can address both the marginalization of rivers and of their neighbors, it will be impossible to create thriving communities with healthy rivers and clean water for all. Healthy rivers and communities share similar attributes, including diversity, interconnection, productivity, and resilience. And the health and vitality of both are intertwined.

In my experience, there are four critical components needed to successfully move an equitable urban river restoration forward:

  1. discovery;
  2. engage imagination around the possibility for transformation;
  3. successful, tangible projects connected to community and other stakeholder priorities; and
  4. sustainable constituency with community leadership and shared decision-making

Read the full article about urban rivers by Jenny Hoffner at Nonprofit Quarterly.