The Greenway: Turning Disaster into Open Space
Near Grand Forks, North Dakota
After the nineteen ninety-seven flood, Grand Forks and East Grand Forks made a deliberate choice: the most flood-prone land along the Red River would not be rebuilt with houses and commercial buildings. Instead, the two cities created the Greenway, a continuous park system with roughly twenty miles of trail running along both banks of the Red River through both cities. Many homes and other structures were bought out and demolished.
What was once densely settled riverfront is now trails, ball fields, disc golf, and natural floodplain buffer. The Greenway functions simultaneously as public open space, bike and pedestrian trail, and a passive flood-management system. It is one of the most thoroughgoing examples in the United States of using a natural disaster as an opportunity to reimagine a city's relationship with the river that defines it.
