Tundra Stitch

Utqiagvik—formerly known as Barrow—is the northernmost city (71.3°N, 156.8°W) in the U.S. Arctic located on the Chukchi Sea, and is the North Slope Borough’s largest city, a home to approximately 5,000 residents of which 63% are Inupiaq. The city is built entirely on continuous and ice-rich permafrost, which is extremely sensitive to any surface changes that alter the existing thermal regimes, including the diversity and insulating capacity of the tundra plants. Tundra plants are critical for permafrost and habitat preservation, coastal stabilization, ecological forecasting, gravelroad dust control, and the indigenous subsistence lifestyle. Despite this importance, and the omnipresence of tundra plants surrounding the city, the role of plants is entirely missing in the official North Slope Borough and city of Utqiagvik vision plans adopted in 2019 and 2015, respectively.

Our project aims to fill this gap with a two-fold framework for creating an Arctic Urban Tundra: 1) a new urban tundra vision plan for the city of Utqiagvik, and 2) a pilot project that reconfigures the urban center into an urban tundra park, integrated with city and public building facilities. The ultimate aim of the project is to foreground the cultural and ecological roles of tundra plants in the design and organization of an Arctic city, and to create meaningful public spaces highlighting the multivalent relationships between the plants and the local community.