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