Project Reflections: NY Waterfront Design Project

BROAD CHANNEL TEAM REFLECTION ESSAY

Lilly Shephard, Elaine Petrarca, Colin Matheson, Emily Dutton

The visioning and backcasting process allowed our team to brainstorm ideas for our ideal future. Through uninhibited thinking we collaboratively dreamed up environmental goals for the year 2040. Our vision was situated in six main categories: waste reduction, legislation, community improvement, alternative energy, education, and wellbeing. We drew from multiple perspectives and methodologies in this project. While a majority were based on sustainability, we also explored options for economic and education advancement. Through combining the environment, the economy, the community, and education, we engage in the humanities mindset--that disciplines should be connected, not separate, to solve problems. Through legislation that provides tax breaks for environmentally friendly business practices, businesses would be inclined to rethink their waste and production processes. As corporations learn more about the importance of sustainability, in turn, they could pass what they learn onto their employees. By encouraging a healthy lifestyle--they will see increased productivity in their employees. Workers will have longer attention spans, take less sick days, and have increased mental health. We propose that government, businesses, innovators, educators, and communities all work together to help clean up our earth.

Ideally, we would have loved to implement all of our visioning ideas in our neighborhood, The Broad Channel; however, after researching our community, we realized that every area has problems unique to their area. As discussed in our presentation, our neighborhood is primarily a blue collar lower-middle class community. Since families have lived their for generations, there is a very rich history and culture. From interviews we gleaned that the community members might be resistant to gentrification. Therefore, our proposals focus on expanding current projects that are already in place.

Our vision is situated in three projects: regrowing and developing natural barriers, building neighborhoods with FEMA approved flood damage resistance materials, and the implementation of permeable concrete. Through regrowing sea grass and local flora and fauna, the neighborhoods will be naturally protected from waves and flooding. History has shown that concrete barriers and other manmade fixes are not durable. We will also hold educational seminars so that community members can learn about the environmental history of their island.

While the other two proposals use manmade materials, the projects plan to work with the environment and not against. We hope to rebuild destroyed homes with flood resistant materials and building plans, so that when the next storm or flood comes, buildings are more resilient. One plan the city has for homes is to raise them and change the measurements. Our addition to their project is to use only certain materials approved by FEMA and to build a multi-family neighborhood. Multi-family homes can decrease the building and maintenance costs--something that is necessary in a middle class community. Additionally, we plan to educate and train young community members in construction so that the local economy is stimulated.

Our final project is to repave the roads with permeable concrete that absorbs stormwater. This will allow for residents to evacuate safely and not have to constantly move cars to a higher ground. We chose to consult with a British firm that specializes in topmix. We plan to have the company work with the community in order to develop a material that can withstand future floods

Our team decided to pursue these specific ideas because our community is resistant to change, yet recognizes something must be done to protect their home from the water that surrounds them. The citizens of Broad Channel are in a unique position, as they reside on a sleepy island right next to the hustle and bustle of New York City. A lot of our ideas came from the visiting exercise, as we imagined a more connected and community based New York City. Once we were assigned Broad Channel as our specific area of the city, we realized we already had that community we were hoping to establish through environmental initiatives. This realization helped us focus on tangible ideas for Broad Channel, specifically ones that would bring economic opportunities to the area. Our visioning exercise helped us come up with tangible, and realistic, goals that the everyday person could accomplish. These goals came alive through our presentation, as we realized the key to achieving them was enlisting the help of the very community we wanted to fix.

Our group learned a lot through this exercise, but the biggest thing we learned was how much has to go into plans like this in order to make them actually happen. First, the community has to support the ideas that are proposed because after all, they are the targets of these initiatives. After that, support from the local, state and federal government must be obtained. This step can be extremely difficult, because sometimes the different levels of government have different interests. One level of government may support the idea and agree to fund it, while a different level of government might hate it and not sign off on the funding. Through this project we also learned how long initiatives, such as this one, take to actually happen. These plans do not just turn into action overnight, but with the correct funding and support these plans can happen. This project also made us realize how much is at stake for the residents of Broad Channel,, but also while recognizing that a plan like this could really save their community.

GOWANUS CANAL TEAM REFLECTION ESSAY

Elio Casinelli, Carly Liebich, Suzanne Mullins, Peter Schlachte, Madeleine Soss

As Majora Carter, among many others, noted in her Wake Forest lecture earlier this week, urban design is tricky in that it must balance the needs and desires of many different stakeholders--the community, the designers, the bureaucratic officials, and so on. Carter also explained, however, that with her work, it is the wants and needs of her fellow community members that she always strives to prioritize. The result of this approach is intentional design that not only benefits the environment, but that also strengthens the bonds of community in any given local neighborhood. At the beginning of our project on urban design in the Gowanus Canal, our group focused mainly on the multitudinous environmental factors that are degenerating the canal. With this approach, though, we struggled to create solutions, and we feared the effects of gentrification that our solutions might cause. It was not until we chose to take a similar approach to Carter--a community-needs-based approach--that our group was able to craft solutions that we felt were beneficial on a holistic level. Our project became a study in the interlocked relationship between the environment and community, and to successfully combat the continued environmental crises of the future, we believe that all urban designers must do the same.

In our developmental process to imagine sustainable living projects in the Gowanus Canal area, our group learned a variety of lessons by interacting with the visioning exercise and backtracking process. To take on a project of such magnitude was to understand the complexity of our issue, and the residual consequences that accompany our innovative decisions. While delving into the details was important, we initially were unaware of the far reaching impacts that changing neighborhoods can have. The people of Gowanus were intimately attached to their identity, and wanted to keep together their shared reality. In changing the landscape of the Gowanus, we would have to somehow alter or shift their perception to accommodate change.

Particularly, these two reflective processes taught us that sustainability does not happen on a fixed timeline, but rather as an organic driving force punctuated by moments of distinct change. This idea was arguably our foundational reason for the incorporation of educational facilities into the green active spaces: to teach residents that sustainability is not only building parks and cleaning canals, but also at home measures like keeping lights off and recycling. By imagining what the Gowanus Canal would look like 40 years in the future, we found that while infrastructure development was vital to our success, having the people accept their changing environment was equally important.

In a more tangible sense, the backtracking and visioning exercise guided us in our creation of sustainability zones, and elucidated us to the research that still needed to be done. The Gowanus Canal ghost stream network still needed years of intense research to determine the potential effects of recovering them, and speaking to the city about revitalizing publicly owned spaces would take long negotiations. We were forced, by looking at the timeline, to be practical, yet ambitious.

When thinking about large, grandiose, and often overwhelming environmental issues, the only reasonable solutions are vague and impractical. While coming up with solutions to problems such as the impact of sea level rise in coastal communities, the same non-specific and therefore ineffective solutions such as “managed retreat” or “incorporating nature” come to mind. Focusing our Waterfront Design Project on a specific neighborhood in New York City enabled our group to use these vague concepts and apply them in realistic ways to create a positive impact in our community.

The Gowanus Canal has a rich, but not necessarily pretty, history that shapes not only the physical state of the canal itself but also how people perceive the canal. It is a historically polluted body of water which means that people have low expectations for the canal and have become accustomed to its polluted state. Removing the “black mayonnaise” will not be enough to convert the industrial wasteland into a thriving (and healthy) community in which people will want to live and interact. Our project focused heavily on making the canal a biologically stable entity that will no longer expose the surrounding community to heavy metals, raw sewage, and carcinogens. Furthermore, we also hope that someday the canal can be converted into a thriving makeshift ecosystem. However, cleaning up the canal leads to the potential for upper-class people and businesses to encroach on the extremely well-located real estate. We had to make sure that our cleaning project avoided being the catalyst for unsolicited gentrification that had already priced out many people and in extreme cases, caused homelessness.

Our waterfront design project for Gowanus had to balance making the community healthy and habitable, while also preserving the historically diverse populations that reside in the surrounding neighborhoods. We kept the wellbeing of the community in mind with all aspects of our project, making sure to not allow for the cleaned up land to be bought or rezoned by private entities, but rather reintroduce the community to the canal and re-establish a common identity amongst its inhabitants. In creating our strategy, our group took an approach which humanity has historically avoided when planning urban development; instead of pushing forward, we decided to take a step back and enact a transformation by reverting to nature’s original design. When the Gowanus Canal’s “Ghost Streams” were initially paved over and diverted elsewhere, it is likely that the architects of years past were merely thinking in the short term. That narrowly-focused mentality which led to structural instabilities and the stagnation of the Gowanus is the same kind of reasoning which constantly proves problematic for society today--and our group was determined to be different. In unearthing and reconnecting the old feeder streams to the canal, the natural world could slowly start to reclaim some control over the function of the area.

Considering that the region surrounding the Gowanus Canal is heavily populated with residential and industrial structures, our project would take careful planning and close work with the community’s citizens. There would not be any sudden takeovers or seizures of land, but rather a multi-faceted dialogue to help create safer, greener structures and neighborhoods which flow and curve with the streams. Our number one goal would be to improve both environmental and human health, all while still maintaining the integrity of the place and its people.

With an influx of fresh water into the area and the ensuing proliferation of natural life within the Canal region, it would then be logical and reasonable to institute green spaces along the waterways. These areas would further promote the creation of healthful ecological communities--ground vegetation would filter rainwater runoff before it enters the canal, and trees would help foster cleaner airways and create roosts for various organisms. In addition, the spaces would be a welcome, open expanse for cramped city-dwellers to frolic, and would help promote improved mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Thinking long-term, these riparian green areas--once established--would incorporate “outdoor classrooms” to educate both young and old. We would implement signage, hands-on exhibits, and nature guides to teach about the history of the Gowanus Canal, its struggles and ongoing recovery, and the importance of ecologically-minded decisionmaking and development. After all, our physical transformation of the region will all be for naught if we do not instill a sustainable mindset into future leaders--the creation of Gowanus Green Education Centers would undoubtedly provide the most impactful pathway toward a brighter future.

Throughout the project we learned about the rich history of the canal, the problems surrounding the canal, and we created a solution to help the canal moving forward. Our solution involves building on the strong sense of community to ensure that the citizens of the surrounding neighborhood don’t lose what makes them love their home. We want to improve the canal not only for the health and well being of the people in the neighborhood but to create a new narrative for the canal itself. Helping to fix the canal would educate the community about how to be sustainable which will lead to a more sustainable future not only for the neighborhoods surrounding the canal but for the entire city of New York.

RED HOOK TEAM REFLECTION ESSAY

Vicky Wu, Jenny Hill, Cristin Berardo, Chris Fitzgerald

Red Hook is an area filled with vibrant culture and history. From its Dutch background and days as a busy trading port to its public housing project and its unique geographical location, Red Hook serves as one of Brooklyn’s most idiosyncratic neighborhoods. In attempts to preserve such rich culture and history, our aim was to draft a plan that both preserves the community and pushes back against the increasingly gentrified atmosphere of displacement. Despite its susceptibility to flooding and rising sea levels, it is still feasible to create a community out of the area that works to welcome and interact with the water and rising sea levels. Thus, ultimately seeking to develop a different kind of resiliency that is both adaptable and realistic. One that is not premised on barriers and walls that temporarily treat the damage but rather one that prepares for and interacts with the rising sea levels.

Many of Red Hook’s unique qualities stem from its geographical positioning. The neighborhood has been a part of the Town of Brooklyn since it was originally organized in the 1660s. The quirky peninsula is less than one square mile, bounded by the Gowanus Expressway, the Gowanus Canal, Upper New York Bay and Buttermilk Channel. More than half the neighborhood’s roughly 11,000 residents live in subsidized rentals at the Red Hook Houses. Surrounded by water on all three sides, Red Hook is almost an island, perpetuating the strong community feel of the area. The area’s historical industrial and freight port history has left a legacy of brick and concrete architecture, towering container cranes, parking lots and few trees or green spaces. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the area was known largely for its high crime and poverty rates. However, as real estate in the New York area becomes increasingly coveted, previously abandoned areas have been picked up by new housing developments simultaneously changing the neighborhood’s reputation and welcoming a new demographic to the area.

Red Hook is an extremely diverse neighborhood. Though Red Hook’s total population has only increased by an estimated two percent, the white population now makes up 31 percent as opposed to eight percent 16 years ago. The Black and Latino population still, however, make up the majority of the neighborhood’s population. Of the 11,000 inhabitants, 6,000 live in the Red Hook East and West Houses, the largest NYCHA development in Brooklyn. Red Hook’s income is separated into three tracts. Tract 59, Tract 53, and Tract 85. In 2012, the median income of New York City was $34,203. In Tract 85, made up largely of the Red Hook public housing project, the median income was $17,819. Tract 59 and 53 have higher median incomes with Tract 53 at $33,989 and Tract 59 at $42,406. After containerization shipping replaced traditional bulk shipping, many businesses and jobs moved away from Red Hook to New Jersey. Unemployment increased and the neighborhood’s economy fell into a rapid decline. By the 190s and 80s, Red Hook became known as a crime ridden, desolate neighborhood severed from the rest of Brooklyn.

When Hurricane Sandy hit Red Hook it devastated local residential and commercial communities. People lived in despair as they went three weeks without electricity and 17 days without heat. The inevitability of the consequences of living in a coastal region during a time a climate stress hit hard. The Red Hook community though has grit. As demonstrated by the communities response in the aftermath. As seen in an interview with local business owner, Charles Flickinger, the community pulled together and simply kept focusing on the everyday tasks that needed to be done in order to restore their shared home. The response of Red Hook in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy factored greatly into our design plans. This neighborhood has always been driven off the hard work of the members of the community. This is why at the core of all of our design solutions the focus was community involvement.

Due to the extensive damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, many projects aimed at increasing the resiliency of Red Hook’s waterfront, buildings, and commercial industry are underway. These undertakings range in scale, from small community projects to nationally and state funded plans. The NY state website contains an interactive map with some of these initiatives, illustrating their progress by the color on the map. A few examples of these projects include a feasibility study of coastal flood risk reduction, a study on the Gowanus canal evaluating storm surge barriers, a NY Housing Authority project to repair damages, integrate flood protection systems, and instate backup power sources in existing buildings, and a program to fund community based development organizations in low income communities to revitalize commercial activities.

The largest resiliency project currently underway is the $100 million comprehensive Red Hook flood plan, one designed and funded by the Red Hook NY Rising committee. At this stage, this initiative involves a team of specialists, including engineers, urban designers, landscape architects, and environmental specialists, who are studying the feasibility of an integrated flood protection system.

The NY Rising committee also works with various other groups, such as Rebuild by Design and The Brooklyn Greenway initiative, incorporating these outside project ideas into their own. One of these additional groups, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, has been researching how dredge material (the mud that is removed to keep channels deep) could be used in underwater structures to mitigate waves and protect against floods. They want to use Red Hook as a pilot area for their design.

In our plan, we wanted to build off of these existing resiliency ideas while also generating unique solutions. Therefore, our resiliency strategies focus less on the construction of barriers and more on the integration of the neighborhood and its people with their surrounding aquatic environment. By incorporating the waterfront into the identity of the community, people will be more likely to address issues of rising sea level in a sustainable and resilient way. Though our ideas are largely separate from the existing ones, we used the Port Authority’s project as a leaping off point for one our initiatives. In addition to dredge materials, we thought to use compost to create underwater structures that would both mitigate wave action and provide important ecological habitats.

Our goal through phase one of our plan, redevelop Red Hook’s waterfront, was to protect local business from future threats similar to Sandy while also providing a sense of place. The incorporation of public murals is meant to honor the history and grit of the people who have shaped Red Hook while setting the scene that the waterfront is a place of vibrancy, culture, innovation, and community. By initiating town composting we are once again calling upon the community to drive development. This compost will be used to allow the growth of grass and flood resistant plant life on the waterfront. The refurbished industrial factories will function as hubs of collaboration and innovation. This all coupled with our plan reintroduce sea grass into the region will allow the community to take charge of their resiliency plan to prevent future climate related devastation.

The second phase of our plan, to increase green spaces within the residential neighborhoods, is also influenced by Sandy. As seen through the means of survival that took place in the Red Hook Housing Project, community means everything. Playing off this existing sense of community, we are calling upon high school classes to care and maintain the trees planted along the Gowanus Canal by former generations. These trees will aid in flood protection and establish an even stronger sense of place and will utilize this connection to establish environmental responsibility through generations.

The necessity to understand Red Hook’s unique attributes was vital in terms of being able to envision potential avenues for resiliency and flood preparation. We, as a team, felt that the only way to come up with effective proposals was to understand the area and its associated factors. Since Red Hook’s population is both quite small and live largely in the Red Hook public housing project, economic resources are more limited than areas with higher median incomes and larger populations. The two phase project aims to both protect and preserve the vibrancy of the culture and history while simultaneously developing natural barriers that work with the water in the aims of decreasing structural damage and displacement for future floods and hurricanes.

The backcasting process was useful in our presentation as we were able to envision where we wanted to end up and how we wanted to use the spaces that were specific and unique to the neighborhood. Rather than place a generalizing band aid over the entire area, it was useful to get to know the area and its demographic makeup. This was helpful as it helped up brainstorm ideas that were realistic and applicable given the size and socio economic status of the area’s residents. Backcasting helped us locate where we wanted to end up, which in this case was preserving the culture of the neighborhood, to which we felt we could achieve using our two phase project. This allows for both flood protection, and increased community interaction. Sustainability was achieved by recycling as restructuring abandoned buildings while the humanities aspect allowed us to apply a variety of creative outlets to keep the unique qualities of the urban landscape. Although our proposals may not necessarily seem revolutionary, they are simple steps that can be taken towards educating the community to perpetuate continued involvement and recycling of resources and dredge materials and underwater dunes. This way, there is long run change that does not require an absurd amount of financial resources. Involve the community and its inhabitants because they are the core of the change.

SHEEPSHEAD BAY TEAM REFLECTION

Olivia Street, Mackenzie Howe, Caroline Bosch, Cameron Waters and Dana Leavitt

In 2040, Sheepshead Bay will be a neighborhood that incorporates short and long-term infrastructure that works with the water to create a more sustainable future without detracting from its vibrant community. It will be modeled after effective implementations from other cities, and similarly learn from past design mistakes. The design will provide a space for residents to interact with each other, the physical space of the neighborhood, and the surrounding natural environment, while addressing the vital problem of storm water flooding and superstorm destruction.

Our group used the neighborhood’s history and current culture to construct a solution that works with the district and environment. Sheepshead Bay is a neighborhood near Coney Island; the community’s roots are in “ritzy” hotels, casinos and a racetrack. After sewage system issues in the early 20th century, the community took an economic hit, causing the community’s prosperity to decline. Since Hurricane Sandy, Sheepshead Bay has been in the process of reinventing itself. Our plans to cater to a younger generation while maintaining the historical charm will aid in that transition. By emphasizing the boardwalk feel of the neighborhood in our design plan, the area can keep its character while being better prepared for extreme weather events.

The boardwalk riparian buffer system along the water would provide leisure activities, including a reverse aquarium and elevated public park, while simultaneously protecting the neighborhood’s main waterfront economic section from flooding and storm surge. This solution adopted components of both the humanities and sustainability as themes of community building and shared space were incorporated with resilient infrastructure remodeling and green urban design to produce a cohesive plan for the future of the waterfront experience. In articles and social media postings, the Sheepshead Bay community raised concerns about losing access to the water and the lack of work done post-Sandy to protect against similar storms in the future. The plan that was developed to raise homes and small businesses was only effective in the immediate future and didn’t take into consideration financial and structural difficulties. Moreover, the needs of the residents to maintain their connection to the water while securing affordable, safe, and resilient building structures were not being met. Our proposal is consistent with resident feedback about working with public space and the water to create an advantageous solution to combat storm surges.

On a larger social scale, the visioning and backcasting process allowed us to design our plans with a focus on physical and mental wellbeing, so that the community members are happier, healthier, are outside more, and have less stress. They live less individualistically and more communally, sharing space and resources with their neighbors and incorporating their everyday experiences into that of the community as a whole. We hope that the community will experience a shift in perspective, adopting a viewpoint that is less anthropocentric and sees humans as part of nature rather than separate from it. The residents of Sheepshead Bay share sentiments of being connected to the waterway; residents’ identities have been shaped by the coastal community lifestyle. We wanted to foster this shared experience of the water and integrate it into the parts of Sheepshead Bay that are not immediately on the coastline. Channeling flood waters into the city by remodeling current highway infrastructure would allow residents interface with the waterway in their everyday commute to school or work. It would create a shared public space encouraging physical activity and community interaction while increasing overall mental and physical wellbeing. With this aspect of our design, the water becomes a component of the community, rather than the community being separate from or working against it.

Another important aspect of this area that we felt needed to be addressed was the shift in demographics that is already occurring. Sheepshead Bay is experiencing a state of flux as younger, wealthier individuals are moving into the area; a new generation of middle and upper class young people that work in the city also want a clean place to live by the water. With its history as a location for quaint vacation homes and a small fishing community, Sheepshead Bay serves as a prime area for high rise condo and apartment complexes to be developed. However, as wealthier populations move into this area, gentrification subsequently becomes inevitable. The danger behind making these improvements to the area, like channeling flood water into to make the area more interactive and kid-friendly, is the likelihood of wealthier citizens moving to the area and pricing natives out of their current homes. Interviews conducted revealed that residents who have lived in Sheepshead for generations are excited about the immigration of working class young people into their area, as their local businesses and small-town charm are appealing to this new audience and has proven to be profitable for the original citizens. The only point of contention that has been presented thus far is the new condominium complex potentially blocking the view of the water for homes behind it.

In the future, however, our group worried that our designs originally created to protect Sheepshead locals from superstorm destruction would eventually - and unintentionally - lead to gentrification of the area and necessitate that the residents abandon their home. To avoid this potential problem, some form of rent control policy would need to be implemented in the near future. We would also propose certain zoning restrictions on the waterfront, prohibiting the development of more high rise complexes that would block the views and lower property value of family homes and small businesses.

Our goals for the future of Sheepshead Bay were for the community to invite economic and community development while maintaining its culture and respecting original residents, to ensure the protection of the bay area for the next 100 years without completely changing the neighborhood the community has grown to love, and to incorporate the surrounding environment into the everyday experience of the residents. The strategy that our team used to transform Sheepshead Bay offers an integrative, sustainable and efficient approach for dealing with sea level rise and extreme weather events. Our plan allows for adaptability to the problems at hand while keeping in mind the wants and needs of both current and prospective residents. Our strategies are transformative in that they address the current infrastructural problems that Sheepshead Bay deal with in terms of sea level rise and extreme storms. Our strategies are also designed to adapt to future challenges and economic, social, and environmental issues.