Casestudy

This casestudy compares two waterfront projects. 'The East River Waterfront Esplanade' by the city of New York itself, and 'Performance Park' by HM White Architects for a designcompetition. 

It's striking that there is a clear difference in designquality between the two projects. Whereas the East River project by the government appears to be much more calculated and has had years and years of preparation and studies, they don't seem to reach their goals. The project is not as flexible and diverse as it could be, and the waterfront is not physically accessible at all. The green on the waterfront is mostly used as a visual, esthetic quality and not as an active solution to cope with for example sea level changes, ecosystems, different activities, ... This is where 'Performance Park' does a better job.

HOW LIVABLE IS BROOKLYN?

The subject of our research was city ecology. We tried to approach this subject from an anthropologic point of view. City ecology is all about the quality of life and that is why we started asking ourselves: "How livable is Brooklyn?".

For many decades the New York Bay was home to one of the biggest and most successful harbors of the world. In the past decades however, industries started to shift their focus on to other harbors, where resources and cheap labor were present in abundance, leaving the bay neglected.

New York developed into one of the greatest cities in the world because of its water, but really: "How swimmable is Brooklyn?".

Brooklyn is part of an island, but it doesn't feel like it's surrounded by water. In comparison with Manhattan, a great part of the borough doesn't have access to natural landscapes such as water or parks. The only physical element is the built environment, creating an artificial landscape on its own.
Where connection to the waterfront could be possible, it is often obstructed by fences. On a waterfront accessibility map, it becomes clear that a major part of the shoreline is inaccessible and even invisible.

With the exception of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, almost no shore is reachable. When comparing real-estate prices of different neighborhoods with each other, a clear overlap shows between more expensive and regions with water visibility and/or access.

When you eventually succeed in reaching the shore, you cannot enjoy the water like you should be able to: the water quality doesn't allow for water recreational activities. The water quality of New York has significantly improved over the past years, but is still in very bad shape. Definitely the Red Hook bay and Jamaica are heavily polluted, due to previous or ongoing industrial activities, sewage overflow in case of heavy rainfall and standing water.

Streets, sidewalks, rooftops,... are all surfaces where rainfall can't be retained in the soil, the sewers have to cope with all of the water. In case of heavy rainfall, the sewage overflow ends up directly in the bay, which is one of the main causes of the water pollution.

By studying Brooklyn's topography we found a relationship between the topography and how Brooklyn developed its grid. The streets clearly run parallel with lines of equal height. The natural inclinations define how the directions of the Brooklyn grid were conceived. The grid wasn't implemented as rigidly on its environment as in Manhattan but rather adapted to the existing condition.

Brooklyn's topography also defines which areas are in risk of flooding in case of a hurricane or because of arctic meltdown. This would create plenty of new shoreline if the city doesn't undertake actions in the future.

More inland, the quality of air is a major problem for public health. An interesting question to ask in this context is "How breathable is Brooklyn?".

Concentrations of particulate matter in the air are mainly caused by old heating boilers of buildings, vehicle exhaust and industrial processes. Creating tons of health problems for the people heavily exposed to it.

Very striking is fact that the amount of hospitalizations caused by respiratory problems is for a major part attributable to the large amount of particulate matter in the air.

A remarkable big area in the south of Brooklyn  where a lot of inhabitants suffer asthma and other air-related problems might be caused by bad indoor air quality in larger housing projects.

Another big issue for Brooklynites is unhealthy food and the many problems related to it. That is why "How tasty is Brooklyn?" is the third question in our research.

By drawing a Voronoi-diagram of pizza restaurants in Brooklyn, we discovered a very homogenous distribution throughout the borough. Pizza is quick, it's cheap and most of the time right around the corner. The Voronoi-diagram creates fictive communities, each defined by one restaurant. The area served by one place is rather small. We only considered pizza restaurants which showed up on Google Maps, obviously there are a lot of other places selling fast food. Mapping those would take a week.

When doing the same for the community gardens, we stumbled upon a remarkable fact: We expected that in places where there is a lot of poverty, fresh food would be a lot less available.

But we discovered the opposite: A lot more community gardens are found in areas where poverty is the most strikingly present. This is due to the large amount of vacant lots in those areas, creating the possibility for urban farming.

Clearly, New York City is facing challenges concerning its ecology.

How can a long-term vision, such as PLANYC be realized in practice? Can projects be conceived beyond the terms of mayors?

Vision 2020: New York City comprehensive waterfront plan

Vision 2020 is a part of Planyc 2030 by mayor Bloomberg. They have already opened up access to miles of shoreline to the public, built new waterfront parks, cleaned the waterways and created jobs along the waterfront.

Image: Waterfront | http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/cwp/vision2020_nyc_cwp.pdf

Eight goals are formulated:

_1 Expand public access to the waterfront and waterways on public and private property for all New Yorkers and visitors alike.

_2 Enliven the waterfront with a range of attractive uses integrated with adjacent upland communities.

_3 Support economic development activity on the working waterfront.

_4 Improve waterquality through measures that benefit natural habitats, support public recreation, and enhance waterfront and upland communities.

_5 Restore degraded natural waterfront areas, and protect wetlands and shorefront habitats.

_6 Enhance the public experience of the waterways that surround New York – our Blue Network.

_7 Improve governmental regulation, coordination, and oversight of the waterfront and waterways.

_8 Identify and pursue strategies to increase the city’s resilience to climate change and sea level rise.

The waterfront is very important for New York City. It has 500 miles of shoreline, since NY City consists of islands and water. The waterfront is part of the city’s identity and Vision 2020 will make it a part of the everyday life of all New Yorkers. It’s interesting to think of water as a connective tissue between de boroughs, it shapes land. Amanda M. Burden, director of the department of city  planning, describes the water as the 6^th borough.

Mannahatta: A natural history of new york city – Eric W. Sanderson

Image: Manhattan 1609 vs now | Mannahatta: A natural history of new york city

The ‘Mannahatta project’ wants to create an image of what Manhattan looked like before the urbanization, the day Henry Hudson came to Manhattan Island’s shore on the 12^th of September 1609. Manhattan looked very different back then: very green, with 55 ecosystems and thousands of species. If Manhattan looked like this today, it would be a national park. The original Native American people were the Lenape. They named the island ‘Mannahatta’, ‘Island of many hills’.

Image: Lenape, original Native Americans | Mannahatta: A natural history of new york city

Eric Sanderson is a landscape-ecologist and did 10years of research to reconstruct Mannahatta at the scale of a block. But there are very few written sources from 1609, and a few paintings. For example this painting by Thomas Howdell from 1768, which shows the hills of Greenwich Village.

Image: Greenwich Village by Thomas Howdell, 1768 | Mannahatta: A natural history of new york city

But the biggest break-through in the research was the British Headquarters Map from 1783, at the end of the American Revolution. It was designed for military purposes: mapping of roads, buildings, fortresses, hills, swamps, rivers, wetlands, … Many of these elements have disappeared over time, for example the hills. But georeferencing the old map with a contemporary map, allows us to locate this lost landscape.

Image: British Headquarters Map, 1783 | Mannahatta: A natural history of new york city

To reconstruct the history of Manhattan, four steps are needed:

_1 Describe the fundamentals of the landscape or ‘abiota’ (soils, rocks, water, shore, …)

_2 Influence of people on the land  (Lenape, war, urbanization, …)

_3 Describe all species that were living on Mannahatta and how they formed communities, mapping these species by habitat (food, water, shelter, reproductive resources)

_4 Muir webs link these three points into a network, because different species need each other or the same things. A Muir web shows how nature works.

Image: Muir Web | Mannahatta: A natural history of new york city

This info is brought together in an online map at welikia.org which means ‘my good home’. It is possible to check block by block which river, plants, animals, how much Lenape Indians lived there.

Here is the link: http://welikia.org/m-map.php

Sea level rise

Image: Storm surge from the 1938 hurricane at the Battery, New York City | Credit: NOAA/NWS Historic Collection.

New York is one of the most vibrant and rich cities in the world. It was the first megacity in 1950. But at same time the city is very vulnerable to storms and the rising current due to the climate change.  Many parts of New York city lay just a few feet above sea level. Flooding of the subway and airport can easily disconnect the city from the world. By 2050 the water will rise 30 to 70cm and by 2080 60 to 140cm. 

Recently the subway was shut down one day and a half before hurricane Irene threatened the region.

“New York's subway system, which carries 7 million riders daily and operates the largest fleet in the world, had never closed due to weather.”

“Airlines canceled more than 9,000 flights for the weekend and another 250 on Monday.”

“More than 1 million people evacuated the New Jersey shore areas via roads over a 24-hour period.”

“New York authorities said they could close the George Washington Bridge, depending on Irene's winds. Other New York City suspension bridges could also close.”

“New York harbor was emptied of ships.”

http://sanfrancisco.ibtimes.com/articles/204921/20110827/irene-closes-ny-subways-airlines-abandon-northeast.htm

Image: A message is left for Hurricane Irene on one house | http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0826/Hurricane-Irene-carries-threat-of-inland-floods-not-just-coastal-surge-VIDEO

 

“Jianjun Yin, a climate modeler at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) at Florida State:

Considering that much of the metropolitan region of New York City is less than 16 feet above the mean sea level, with some parts of lower Manhattan only about 5 feet above the mean sea level, a rise of 8.3 inches in addition to the global mean rise would pose a threat to this region, especially if a hurricane or winter storm surge occurs, Yin said.

Potential flooding is just one example of coastal hazards associated with sea-level rise, Yin said, but there are other concerns as well. The submersion of low-lying land, erosion of beaches, conversion of wetlands to open water and increase in the salinity of estuaries all can affect ecosystems and damage existing coastal development.

Although low-lying Florida and Western Europe are often considered the most vulnerable to sea level changes, the northeast U.S. coast is particularly vulnerable because the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is susceptible to global warming. The AMOC is the giant circulation in the Atlantic with warm and salty seawater flowing northward in the upper ocean and cold seawater flowing southward at depth. Global warming could cause an ocean surface warming and freshening in the high-latitude North Atlantic, preventing the sinking of the surface water, which would slow the AMOC.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090315-new-york-sea-level.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2006/sealevel_nyc.html