BOUNDARIES AND BORDERS

One article I read in this book was titled 'Boundaries and Borders', by Richard Sennet. He makes an impressive parallel with the notion of city walls, as literally being fortifications in historic cities with it's modern version being areas of cultural, communicative, economic exchange.

The antitheses of this ephemeral wall where differing communities exchange in the urban context, is that of a 'deadening wall'; such as a motorway, inner-city traffic, seperation of state housing (London). The writer describes these opposing elements as boundaries and borders; where Borders are zones which are articulated to allow the exchange of urban ecologies, and boundaries have this effect in adverse, repeling integration between urban ecologies.

This can be applied to the urban edges of waterbodies. Richard Sennet uses the example of the Thames bank becoming gentrified and gradually sealing out the lower socio-economic estates that did not sit on the river's edge; forming 'boundaries' rather than 'borders'.  

Perhaps this can be a more specific area of investigation of the coastlines of the maar waterbodies in Auckland?  An analyses of privatisation of the edges, activities that occur and physical state of the maar in relation to it's 'boundaries' or 'borderlines'. 

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'The viewing of water is a solitary act, the regard of nothingness;

in viewing water man turns his back, literally, on the conditions which support his life.'

- Daniel Burnham 1909

Auckland's Volcanic Field.

 

1850 map of Auckland Isthmus and volcanic field. 

Location map showing Auckland basaltic cones and maar craters.

As we know, Auckland sits upon a vast [largely active] volcanic field. It is the geomorphic setting that has shapped the region and the isthmus. I have become interested in the water bodies [maar craters] that were formed by volcanic activity, therefore a part of the network of the volcanic field.

This is a possible area of investigation. Apart from the visual markers of our geological history [that being the volcanos dotted around Auckland], we can also acknowledge - and make connections with - the formation of areas of the coastline and subsequent bodies of water as a result of volcanic activities.

THEREFORE:  potentially allowing the mechanism for the formation of our region and natural landmarks to speak to another realm of urban interaction with landscape, that being the water-bodies of the maar craters.

Volcanic Waterbodies.

A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater that is caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption, an explosion caused by groundwater coming into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake. The name comes from the local Moselle Franconian dialect of Daun, where it is in turn derived from Latin mare (sea). Maars are shallow, flat-floored craters that scientists interpret as having formed above diatremes as a result of a violent expansion of magmatic gas or steam; deep erosion of a maar presumably would expose a diatreme. Maars range in size from 60 to 8,000 m (200 to 26,000 ft) across and from 10 to 200 m (33 to 660 ft) deep, and most are commonly filled with water to form natural lakes. Most maars have low rims composed of a mixture of loose fragments of volcanic rocks and rocks torn from the walls of the diatreme.

[wikipedia]


In Auckland:  Lake Pupuke, Onepoto, Orakei  Basin, Pukaki Lagoon; are all examples of a 'maar'.

Hydrogeology (hydro- meaning water, and -geology meaning the study of the Earth) is the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth's crust, (commonly in aquifers). The term geohydrology is often used interchangeably. Some make the minor distinction between a hydrologist or engineer applying themselves to geology (geohydrology), and a geologist applying themselves to hydrology (hydrogeology).