26 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 Booklet 2: This booklet looks at how small cities relate to their natural environments, with a particular focus on rivers, coastlines, and waterfronts. It examines why waterfronts are so central to small-city identity and history, while also tracing the tensions that shape them today, including lingering industrial pollution, competing pressures between conservation and new development, infrastructure that has cut neighborhoods off from the water, and the growing threat of climate change. It traces common trajectories across cities, from industrial decline and reclamation to mismatches between built infrastructure and the natural landscape, and considers how small cities might learn from and collaborate with one another given their shared waterfront histories. The booklet closes by reflecting on what it would take to reconnect residents socially and culturally to these landscapes, including approaches like interim activation, and features additional voices and projects working on these questions. Waterfronts
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