NY Waterfront Design Project

The New York Waterfront Design Project applies principles of environmental sustainability in a visioning and back-casting exercise that establishes an action plan for the redevelopment of New York City in the year 2040, focusing on waterfront redevelopment, innovative solutions to address the challenges of sea level rise, and creative approaches to reshaping human society and human relationships to the environment. The project raises the following questions:

As human beings, what are our values, and how do they affect our relationships with the environment?

What moral obligations do we have in relation to the environment?

What is problematic about our relationship to the environment, and what opportunities exist through human potential for change, to alter this relationship?

What lessons can we take our course readings and discussions that illustrate ways to change behavior and change social values?

How can such changes take place at the individual level, the community level, the social level, and the global level?

What insights and tools do the humanities provide to help answer these questions?

How can design as an approach to place-based investigation help us answer these questions?

What opportunities exist for drawing from environmental concepts of sustainability as a starting point for visioning, planning, and facilitating social and personal change?

Moving from identified opportunities to action and impact, what changes do you envision for New York City in 2030, and how can these changes be implemented at both personal, community, and city-wide levels?


WATERFRONT DESIGN PROJECT PROMPT

As practitioners of sustainable approaches to life, you are expected as part of a team to help devise possible solutions that take into account sea level rise in New York City. This project intentionally challenges you to take this wicked problem, go through your problem finding phase of investigation and background research, and develop a case study that (a) defines existing challenges, (b) outlines existing opportunities, (c) investigates existing impediments to behavioral, social cultural, personal, collective and community-based change, and (d) generates an action plan and proposes a sustainable practice project that imaginatively draws on the materials, research, and analysis you have gathered and conducted.

Your teams will investigate one of the following four New York City coastal neighborhoods:

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn

Broad Channel, Queens

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Give a short narrative of your neighborhood, including a brief description of how it was impacted by Hurricane Sandy and personal stories of residents. Include a brief overview of any important relevant coastal information unique to your neighborhood and any resiliency or environmental studies that have been conducted there.


SHEEPSHEAD BAY TEAM: Olivia Street, MacKenzie Howe, Caroline Bosch, Dana Leavitt, Cameron Waters

BROAD CHANNEL TEAM: Lilly Shephard, Elaine Petrarca, Colin Matheson, Emily Dutton


RED HOOK TEAM: Vicky Wu, Jenny Hill, Cristin Berardo, Chris Fitzgerald

GOWANUS CANAL TEAM: (1) Elio Casinelli, Carly Liebich, Suzanne Mullins, Peter Schlachte, Madeleine Soss