Turning the Tide: New York’s Waterfront in Transition

Background

In 1609, New York’s future waterfront was an arcadian shore of forests, wetlands, beaches, and sand bars, according to Eric Sanderson’s book Mannahatta. That landscape is lost forever, but visions of a post-industrial, neo-natural waterfront are longstanding. In 1944, futurists Paul and Percival Goodman proposed that Manhattan “open out toward the water,” lining its gritty waterfront with new parks. They were prescient: today the water’s edge of Manhattan is evolving from a “no-man’s-land” into a “highly desirable zone of parks,” in the words of writer Phillip Lopate.

The newly designated “Manhattan Waterfront Greenway” is cobbled together from many bits and pieces like Battery Park City, Hudson River Park, Riverside Park South, restored Harlem River parks, and tiny Stuyvesant Cove Park––each with its own chronicle of past and present struggles among property owners, community groups, developers, politicians, planners, lawyers, and other stakeholders. Elsewhere in the city, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, Governors Island, the South Bronx Greenway, Pelham Bay South Waterfront Park, the Bronx River Greenway, and Gateway National Recreation Area are among many waterfront works in progress.

The colloquium series will address selected topics and issues relating to what has been achieved and what remains to be done to continue the transformation of New York’s waterfronts.

Images from the series

Session 1: Wed. Feb. 24, 2010

“Opening Out Towards the Water”– The Big Picture
Moderator: Dr. William Solecki, Director, CISC

Speakers/Panelists
Click on each speaker’s name to download their presentation [PDF]

• Dr. Rutherford H. Platt, Senior Fellow, CISC
• Robert Yaro, President, Regional Plan Association
• Linda Cox, Executive Director, Bronx River Alliance
• Wilbur L. Woods, Director, Waterfront and Open Space Planning, New York City Department of City Planning
• Cortney Worrall, Director of Programs, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance

Session 2 Wed. March 17, 2010

Waterfront Parks: Old, New, Green, Blue
Moderator: Dr. Rutherford H. Platt

Speakers/Panelists
Click on each speaker’s name to download their presentation [PDF]

• Amy Gavaris, Executive Vice President for the New York Restoration Project
• Dr. Vicky Gholson, Friends of Riverbank State Park
• Peter Mullan, Planning Director, Friends of The High Line Greenway
• Connie Fishman, Executive Director, Hudson River Park Trust
• Jeanne DuPont,  Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, Queens

Session 3 Wed. April 7, 2010

Seizing Opportunities: Waterfront Works in Progress
Moderator: Dr. Melissa Checker, Queens College, CUNY

Speakers/Panelists

• Robert Pirani, Regional Plan Association and Governors Island Alliance––Governors Island
• Kate Van Tassel, NYCEDC and Miquela Craytor, Sustainable South Bronx––South Bronx Greenway
• Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, Four Freedoms Park
• Nancy Webster, Acting Executive-Director, Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy
• Joshua Laird, Asst. Commissioner, NYC Parks and Recreation

Session 4 Wed. April 28, 2010

Reviving the Estuary: Science, Politics, and Education
Moderator: Dr. John Waldman, Queens College

Speakers/Panelists

• Deborah A. Mans, Executive Director, NY/NJ Baykeeper
• Christopher J. Collins, Executive Director, Solar One
• Cortney Worrall, Director of Programs, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance
• Murray Fisher, Urban Assembly New York Harbor School
• William Kornblum, Author, At Sea in the City: New York at the Water’s Edge