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.