Cleancycling the Southwest Brooklyn Waterfront

As a Dutch urban designer who is based in New York, I have always had a keen interest in the Southwest Brooklyn waterfront. I got to know New York through bicycle trips, and it was on one of those trips that I ended up in the area, first in Red Hook and later in Sunset Park. I liked the wide-open views – low skies we say in Dutch – the massive waterfront buildings, the clear skies and the occasional view of Manhattan in the background, so close and yet so far. And I was surprised how underutilized the waterfront was. Despite the big chunky buildings suitable for just about every use, not very much seemed to be happening in the area. Even now that I understand the complexities of New York waterfront development better, I am surprised at how little of the potential of the area is as yet used.

So I was very keen to be part of a Dutch-American team to think about the area’s future. In my Dutch planning practice I have always worked on the regeneration of waterfronts, and the industrial not-working-so-well-anymore waterfronts are my favorite places. I see them as a huge potential for the cities, almost as a promise that new and better futures lie within the boundary of the cities. The invitation came from the City of Rotterdam, which has a cooperation agreement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The program consisted of a three-day workshop to develop proposals for the long-term perspective of the Southwest Brooklyn Waterfront. The assumption is that such a typically Dutch urban design exercise can provide a breath of fresh air and deliver useful insights for the area’s future. My professional practice in New York is based on the same assumption and I was keen to prove its correctness. The team that was assembled for the occasion consisted of around twenty urban planners, landscape designers, port managers, development and sustainability experts, about half from the Rotterdam and half from New York.

We had three days to map out a long-term future for the area, but obviously had to start with an introduction into the area. We picked a beautiful day for the site visit, and although I knew the area from my bike trips, I gained some new perspectives. Highlights were a visit to the roof terrace of the Fairway building (with great views over Red Hook) and a visit inside the Brooklyn Army Terminal – what a phenomenal building. But the best way to grasp the area’s potential is to see the area from the water. The trip on the Water Taxi allowed us to realize the proximity to Manhattan, and at the same time see the enormous size of the spaces that are available. We were also briefed by community groups, which helped us to understand the social and cultural importance of the waterfront, and to appreciate some of the reluctance and even frustration with a long history of largely unsuccessful regeneration efforts for the area.

The team was subdivided in groups, addressing the regional economy, environmental aspects, transportation issues, climate change and community linkage. I was assigned to the economic team, which I liked because in my view the programmatic question (‘what to do in this area’) is the key to its future. We came up with a proposition that is rather close to the Rotterdam Stadshavens’ “Clean Tech Delta” concept. It is a proposal for a working waterfront, focusing on innovation for clean recycling and clean and renewable energy for 21^st century New York. We termed it “Green Tech Brooklyn” and the proposal suggests that Red Hook develops into innovative mixed use urban research lab city area and that the Sunset Park waterfront becomes the New York center for clean recycling or ‘cleancycling’.

To me, “Green Tech Brooklyn” may well be the right direction for the area for two main reasons. Firstly, I think that it is good for this particular waterfront to move away from a reliance on residential development as the ‘savior’ for waterfronts. In the case of the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, regeneration used to primarily consist of the conversion of industrial harbor areas into prime waterfront real estate for residences. It took a while, but recent proposals have broadened, also addressing the need to deliver jobs and to innovate the urban economy. That is a positive development, and one that also fits the Southwest Brooklyn context.

The second reason I think that “Green Tech Brooklyn” will be good for New York is that it is an economic proposition that looks forward rather than backward. One of the key lessons the Dutch harbor regeneration specialists have learned over the last decade is that most attempts at keeping ailing industries alive against the economic tide can only be successful if the industries transform thoroughly. I was surprised about the insistence in some of the discussions to try to keep distribution logistics in the area, although the scale of the area –and the employment benefits for that matter- are clearly limited. It seems to me that proposing large scale logistics as a future for the area would be looking the wrong way. “Green Tech Brooklyn” is the more viable option; it looks ahead and delivers business opportunities and jobs that suit the area and its future.

The “Green Tech Brooklyn” approach delivered the broad framework for the workshop, and other groups built their suggestions on its basis. One of the teams introduced the pearl necklace as a reference for developing community spaces along the river. Other suggestions included oyster beds to reduce storm surge impacts; a strategy to use the greenway not only as a bike path but as a neighborhood park that would also improve the flood resilience of Red Hook; and a research and development campus that would be an anchor for the regeneration of Red Hook (with reference to Rotterdam’s daring RDM campus development). One team went as far as suggesting putting the Gowanus Expressway at ground level and ‘burying’ it in a superlevee. The levee would simultaneously provide flood protection and facilitate safe community connections to the waterfront.

The key of the proposals was that each of the ‘urban interventions’ was trying to serve multiple objectives. Flood safety and environmental quality, neighborhood access to the water and stimulating the local economy, research facilities and urban regeneration – the proposals were multipurpose in the best meaning of the word. This represents a key innovation in recent urban planning and design – a solid economic proposition and the design of smart urban interventions that realize not just singular improvements, but work to deliver multiple values and results for a whole range of communities and stakeholders. If such approaches are applied to the Southwest Brooklyn Waterfront, I am quite sure that the area has a great future ahead of it – not only as a port, but also as employment provider for Brooklyn, a source of joy for the people of New York and as a crucial facility for the sustainable future of New York City.

CLIMATE PROOF – my presentation at the Resilient City Conference in Bonn, May 29, 2010

Climate adaptation, as a specific course of action, is relatively new, although at a more fundamental level society has always adapted to changes in climate. The Resilient City Conference in Bonn on May 28-30, 2010 addressed the need for cities to find new ways to adapt to a changing climate. The conference was organized by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. 470 scientists, professionals and policy makers from around the world attended it. I contributed a paper to the conference and presented its findings on Saturday. In it, I compared the way in which City Climate Plans in the US, Europe and Asia have incorporated climate adaptation strategies.

The paper is based on an analysis that I did with Anisha Mittal and Ashley Spatafore in our New York Urban Progress Design office. We found that most regions and cities have a reasonable understanding of the threat that the changing climate poses, but that their understanding of the vulnerability of their city or region is less than complete. Especially the economic and social components of vulnerability –how changes in the climate affect specific population groups or specific economic sectors- is not yet adequately analyzed.

Our study suggests that much progress is being made in addressing the consequences of climate change. Most cities now recognize the need to take action beyond reducing carbon emissions, and adapt to the changing climate. All ten cities have recent plans and studies to address the issue at hand, and the knowledge on risks and adaptation strategies is increasing fast. But the focus is still rather infrastructural, and we concluded that the cities would need to build-up their social and economic analysis. In terms of adaptation strategies, the cities are just starting to address their climate risks, also mainly from the infrastructural field.

The presentation concludes that the need for climate proofing will become one of the drivers of citywide planning and strategizing. Our impression is that city climate action plans are a suitable platform for improving city resilience, but that more broad scope approaches are needed to address the key climate risks. We conclude that knowledge development is crucial, including vulnerability analysis, mapping, strategic options for adaptation, and success stories on adaptation. We suggest several ways through which City Climate Action Plans can be enhanced to deliver climate proofing, including the need to enhance risk mapping and a plea for more metropolitan level approaches. High on the metropolitan agenda would be the need to ‘climate-proof’ suburbia. This is the next big challenge, especially for a suburban nation like the US.

RESILIENT CITIES – urging climate adaptation investments in cities

Cities are part of the climate problem, but the members of ICLEI, the organization of Local Governments for Sustainability, have no doubt that they are an important part of the solution as well. Cities have to reduce their carbon emissions, but the need to prevent excessive damage require them to also adapt to anticipated changes of the climate. That was the central issue of the Resilient City Conference that was held in Bonn on May 28-30, 2010. It was organized by ICLEI, and the organization claims it is the first World Congress on Climate Change Adaptation for Cities. 470 scientists, professionals and policy makers from around the world attended it.

Encouraging news for me was that the World Bank’s best guesses at the moment put the worldwide costs of adaptation to a changing climate at 75 to 100 billion dollars per year. That is a lot of money, but it is also just 0.2 to 0.7% of the world GDP. Not an excessive price to secure our living environment, I would say, but nevertheless a huge investment in retrofitting society. The worrying news was that current investments in climate improvement are hardly going to cities. Despite the fact that carbon emissions and their reduction, as well as the impacts of climate change, are at least 50% urban in character, just 1% of the carbon finance is going to cities. In terms of financing climate improvements, the shift to the cities still has to be made. The Bonn Conference was an urgent call to do just that.

The conference was an interesting mix - scientists urging policy makers to take full action to address climate risks, politicians calling on adaptation planners and technicians to come up with solutions that they can explain to their constituency, and adaptation experts promoting the integration of adaptation measures into overall development practices. It gives a good insight in the adaptation discussion. Plus lots of case studies, focusing mainly on the process through which adaptation can best be realized.

There were surprisingly few (I thought) presentations that focused on the actual measures that cities take to counter climate risks. I found two explanations. First, most of the workshops were designed to explore the processes at the interface of everyday policy and adaptation expertise. To me, that was an interesting focus, especially in the discussions. Although it made the conference a bit process oriented, it delivered good insights in the problems of setting up the right approach.

The second explanation was that presenters seemed to assume that the actual adaptation actions are well defined, and that the best practices are well known. Therefore they focused on the context rather than on the process. Here I have some doubts. Do we really know how to best retrofit local drainage to allow for heavier rain, or what economic policies can steer development away from vulnerable sectors, and how we can best relocate communities that are exposed to rising sea levels? Sure, a lot of techniques and experiences are available, but it seems to me that there is still a lot to learn from other locations. I am quite sure that good best practices guides and adaptation manuals would help to smoothen adaptation implementation.

Strategic insights were provided among others by Cyntia Rosenzweig, a New York based scientist and co-chair of the New York City Panel for Climate Change. She translated the recently completed scientific report of the Panel into recommendations for cities around the world. Her suggestions included a plea to seek local consensus on the band with of anticipated climate impacts and to use vulnerability assessment as a tool for capacity development. She also suggested that in urban areas, climate mitigation in the form of reducing carbon emissions will have to be combined with adaptation.

Under the surface of the adaptation discussion, many scientists and international policy makers are still hugely frustrated with the lack of international action of the reduction of carbon emissions. Especially among western experts this seems to be the case. I had a similar experience at the State of the Planet Forum at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York last March. European and American experts voiced their frustration, while Asian and African experts were urging participants to ‘move on’ and ‘address the issues at hand’. I fully agreed with that, and it occurred to me that the Bonn Conference was starting to do just that. And Urban Progress is keen to contribute to these efforts.