Had it been the view that effectvly shaped and changed urban rivers all over the world, we would be living in cities of linear parks and not in cities of covered rivers:
Map of the ancient courses of the Mississipi river meander belt by Harold Fisk, 1944. The drawing was made when another view of the river was being coined, one that “the river needs more room which should be given to it laterally rather than vertically”.
In Arunadha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, “Mississipi Floods”, Yale Press, 2001.