PUBLIC MARKS with search sewer

An idiosyncratic example of an mapping project being driven by a personal obsession is Michael Cook’s ongoing exploration of the Toronto sewer system. Wearing urban infiltration, geography graduate student and photographer hats, Cook has been researching the underground constructed landscapes of the Greater Toronto Area for the last decade.

Local Code : Real Estates uses geospatial analysis to identify thousands of publicly owned abandoned sites in major US cities, imagining this distributed, vacant landscape as a new urban system. Using parametric design, a landscape proposal for each site is tailored to local conditions, optimizing thermal and hydrological performance to enhance the whole city’s ecology—and relieving burdens on existing infrastructure. Local Code’s quantifiable effects on energy usage and stormwater remediation eradicate the need for more expensive, yet invisible, sewer and electrical upgrades. In addition, the project uses citizen participation to conceive a new, more public infrastructure as well —a robust network of urban greenways with tangible benefits to the health and safety of every citizen.

Montreal's Cote St-Luc Collector, named Oval Flow by discoverers Nel and Andrew, is a collector sewer that drains the streets and toilets of a swath of western Montreal. Like many of the systems recently discovered in Montreal, it's very long, very deep, and very full of combined sewage.