Making living infrastructure legible: Patricia Johanson’s legacy for water-centered nature-based solutions

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly advanced as responses to climate change, urban flooding, water pollution, biodiversity loss, and declining ecosystem resilience. Yet their evaluation often gives less attention to the cultural, educational, and experiential conditions through which ecological functions become publicly understood and maintained. This paper uses a structured comparative review to reinterpret six built works and proposals by Patricia Johanson through contemporary NBS and ecological-engineering frameworks: Fair Park Lagoon, Candlestick Park Endangered Garden, Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility and Petaluma Wetlands Park, Ulsan Dragon Park, The Draw at Sugar House, and McMaster Monarch/McMarsh. Each case was compared across five substantive dimensions: societal challenge; ecological processes and water functions; biodiversity contribution; multifunctionality and co-benefits; and public access, education, and ecological legibility. Implementation status and evidence type and strength were considered separately so that conclusions remained consistent with the available evidence. The comparison identifies three recurrent patterns. First, Johanson repeatedly integrated water regulation, habitat formation, public use, and circulation rather than treating them as separate technical and aesthetic layers. Second, species-derived form and accessible infrastructure made ecological processes spatially legible and available for interpretation. Third, her late work extended this logic into flood-control and campus-retrofit settings. Evidence strength, however, varies substantially among built and proposed projects. Available sources support documented operational functions and design intentions more strongly than standardized long-term performance or claims about long-term stewardship and maintenance. Johanson’s work therefore offers a historically important design framework and a basis for future NBS evaluation, rather than a uniform performance record across projects.