Reclamation and reconciliation: land-use history,ecosystem services,and the Providence River

Throughout time, American cities have been consciously or unconsciously designed to provide efficient access to ecosystem services. The land-use history of the Providence River serves to illustrate this point. Transformed through land-filling in the nineteenth century, the construction of a hurricane barrier in the twentieth century, and a civic renaissance in the twenty-first century, the shifting landscape of downtown Providence, Rhode Island, reflects a shifting relationship with the land. The area that was once the Great Salt Cove has undergone numerous iterations in the past 400 years—each of these transformations based upon which ecosystem services were most-valued at the time. In this sense, land-use history can serve as a valuable tool in evaluating the societal relationship between nature and culture.