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Project MUSE - Forgetting Waller Creek: An Environmental History of Race, Parks, and Planning in Downtown Austin, Texas

W C reek is a flood-prone stream that runs through the center of Austin, Texas. To quote Joseph Jones, an English professor who published a 1982 treatise on the waterway, Waller Creek flows “quite literally” through “the inner heart of Austin.” It originates in the city’s north-central suburbs and flows generally south through the University of Texas (UT) flagship campus, past the historic Brackenridge Hospital, around the east side of Capitol Square, which sits on a hill, and down the eastern e

Shifting terrains of risk: A history of natural hazards and displacement in three historic black communities of Central Austin, Texas

Geographers, historians, and hazard scholars have established that human vulnerability to environmental hazards is a product of historic interactions between natural and social forces.8 For example, lowlands and riparian zones are

Wheatville was located in North Austin, on a bluff over Shoal Creek, which flanks the west side of Central Austin. Situated on high, flat, gently rolling land, it suffered neither drainage nor flood hazards. It is possible that the community's history begins before th
Not Even Past •

“We may expect nothing but shacks to be erected here”: An Environmental History of Downtown Austin’s Waterloo Park

From the Editors: This article is accompanied by a comment from Edmund T. Gordon, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies & Vice Provost for Diversity at the University of Texas at Austin. Such comments are a new feature for Not Even Past designed to provide different ways to engage with important research.

Parks have long been implicated in the construction of racially inequitable urban spaces in the United States. Cities built and continue building more and better parks in