Crossing the Gowanus: Rethinking the Canal and its Environs

The Gowanus Canal (aka the Lavender Lake) was once an industrial hub for the city, even serving as one of the primary transportation routes for the Brownstone used to construct much of Brooklyn’s iconic housing stock. Unfortunately, the canal was built without the lock systems that would have allowed flushing and the water quickly degenerated. Today the Gowanus is an infamously odiferous barrier separating Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. Recently the EPA went over the city’s head to declare the canal one of its Superfund sites, opening the floodgates for funding to dredge and reclaim the waterway. Recent studies, however, measure the polluted sediment to be at least 80 feet deep, rendering prevalent cleaning methods ineffective and indicating that the process will be long and arduous without a clear result.

A number of people submitted ideas to By the City / For the City for using the canal to re-link the surrounding neighborhoods. Jim from South Brooklyn would have the canal “delisted as a navigable waterway.” The Gowanus’s current classification—an archaic designation as a tall-mast shipping route—means that boats and barges must be able to navigate the entire canal, resulting in the drawbridges and the unusually-high elevation of the Gowanus Expressway and the Smith/9th St subway station. By delisting the canal, the city could reduce the heights of these structures and lessen the visual barrier effect that they create. People could also still canoe under deactivated drawbridges.

Kenneth suggested greenroofing the Gowanus. While the execution is drastically different, the motivation behind this idea echos Jim’s: renewing the urban landscape and expanding accessible habitat. Raymond from Bensonhurst, meanwhile, hopes that “neighborhoods can be more connected in Gowanus, Brooklyn by a green park/riverwalk w/ bike paths and pedestrian walkways that can also help prevent toxic water runoff into the polluted Gowanus Canal.” If the canal was, in fact, delisted as a navigable waterway,  green connections such as planted bridges could be used to create pleasant connections between neighborhoods.

The focus of these ideas is on seizing the opportunity to transform the Gowanus from barrier to bridge. There is plenty of industrial space begging to be repurposed and vacant space to be used. One resident hopes for a “new public building combining spaces for design and the arts with environmental R&D” at the presently vacant space near the Smith/9th St station. Rethinking connectivity issues connected to the canal could make neighborhoods along the Gowanus neighborhood more attractive, accessible, and navigable (for pedestrians), making it a more viable site for economic development. Greenspace could help mediate runoff to the canal, and creating new public spaces could invigorate residents and give the neighborhood a contemporary functionality. Motherless Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem once dubbed the Gowanus the “armpit of Brooklyn;” smart design could integrate a host of improvements and go a long way towards elevating the neighborhood away from such a dubious status.

Think you’re up to the challenge of re-connecting neighborhoods along the Gowanus? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Linear Parks: Emergent Opportunities For Green Links

Due to the recent redevelopment of the High Line and Hudson River Parks, great attention and excitement is heating up around the idea of linear parks. These spaces are particularly interesting in that they often augment or re-use existing infrastructure of different scales and types, like railroad tracks, canals, natural waterways, highways, and arterial roads. This often has long-standing economic, social and environmental implications.

Designers of Hudson River Park and the High Line took areas that had been at the heart of the city’s manufacturing-based economy and retrofitted them to serve as nodes for recreation, a form of “soft” infrastructure for the city, making it more attractive to new information-economy workers. Linear parks are also unique in that they do not just turn underused paths into pedestrian-friendly green space, but they also serve as great catalysts for change and investment in large stretches of the city, benefiting multiple neighborhoods along their routes.

Several By the City/For the City ideas highlighted corridors prime for the redevelopment into linear parks. Anandi in South Ozone Park wants to see “the old, abandoned LIRR running from Forest Park to Rockaway Beach turned into a simpler version of the High Line with native plants, an edible garden, along with a bike and pedestrian path.” The Long Island Rail Road traveled south along the Rockaway Beach Branch from Rego Park all the way to the Rockaway Peninsula as late as the early 1960s. Today, rusty trestles remain, with tracks elevated along much of the route. This could serve as a prime location for a linear park that capitalizes on the line’s old, industrial foundation.

Tony from Greenwich Village wants to see “the parks restored to Park Avenue,” a thoroughfare with a long history of oscillation between serving as a major arterial for traffic and an accessible green space for pedestrians. As of today, the medians of the malls have been narrowed to accommodate for greater car access, but with adequate design attention the malls could be restored to their 1920s grandeur, not only beautifying existing infrastructure, but also incentivizing activity.

More than a few New Yorkers expressed interest in seeing parks along the East River linked and expanded to create an accessible recreational waterfront, following the model of Hudson River Park to the west. Prior to the 1930s, the East Riverfront was dotted with slaughterhouses, glass factories, power stations, and railroad yards. While the stretch along the Lower East Side was redeveloped into the 57-acre East River Park following the construction of the FDR and a string of public spaces exists up the river, connections between them are often tenuous, creating a huge opportunity to improve the city.

Want to take on the challenge of designing a new linear park for NYC? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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New York’s Industrial Past: The Foundation for a Smarter City

Around every corner, under every bridge, and in your community, New York City’s industrial history can still be seen and felt. Many New Yorkers asked architects to develop more innovative, adaptive, functional strategies for reusing these old industrial spaces so they can match the social, ecological and economic climate of today.

The students at CUNY’s Spitzer School of Architecture couldn’t be more spot on when they said they wanted to see “the degraded industrial infrastructure around the city reclaimed, remediated and re-utilized for a civic purpose, activating a new social, spatial, and ecological awareness.” Their proposed site is Gowanus Canal and its areas in proximity. Another entry submitted by Brendan calls attention to the Aqueduct Walk in the neighborhoods of University and Morris Heights. He thinks the aqueduct path should be “renovated to create a beautiful new linear park.” Michelle in the Upper West Side thinks, “The 69th Street Transfer Bridge along the West Side Highway could become a part of the park that residents can access” in an effort to create “a dialogue between cutting-edge, new forms and what has come before.” Lastly, Regina wants to see the armories all across the city used for “arts and cultural activities, like the one on Park Avenue.” 

The adaptive reuse of these and other industrial sites will allow us to celebrate and understand the value and importance industrialization played in the rise of New York City while at the same time creating a more aware, more innovative city from those lingering spaces.

Have a great design solution for one of the ideas listed above? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Beauty: Making New York Easier to ❤ [Part II]

Especially given the current public debate on the merits and drawbacks of historic preservation, it was interesting to see that many New Yorkers equated historical architecture with Beauty. We noticed an especially-high level of interest in the preservation and re-use of historic structures in two boroughs: Queens and the Bronx.

  1. QUEENS: In Astoria, Michael wished for someone to come up with a dynamic public use for the Italianate Steinway Mansion, which is currently on the chopping block. In Jackson Heights, Rosemary hoped that an old house along 34th Avenue could become a community asset. In Bayside, Kelly expressed dismay about the demolition of older homes and the lack of “respect for maintaining the unique beauty of Queens neighborhoods.” Just to the east, Michael suggested the restoration of the historic Bayside Hills neighborhood.
  2. THE BRONX: Ace from Pelham Parkway suggested the re-use of some of the larger apartment buildings along the Grand Concourse to add more hotel space in the South Bronx, and noted that one of their lobbies could serve as a wonderful museum on the history of the borough’s main thoroughfare. Glenn from Pelham Bay called for the restoration and celebration of the Bathhouse at Orchard Beach. Brendan wished for a High Line-like renovation of the Aqueduct Walk, a linear park that follows the original path of the Croton Aqueduct. Fazal from Yorkville proposed the commemoration of Concrete Park’s industrial heritage with the installation of a restored train.

[Click here to read Part I, which focuses on citywide trends in beauty.]

Have a great design solution for one of the ideas listed above? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

By the City / For the City: By the Issues

Over the course of four weeks, New Yorkers shared 483 ideas (and counting) for improving their city through the Institute for Urban Design’s first-ever By the City / For the City crowdsourcing project. We were thrilled to see the ingenuity and thoughtfulness people brought to the question, and now it’s time for designers from around the world to respond to the challenge: We’re asking architects, planners, students, and other urbanists to choose an idea from the hundreds submitted and respond with a brief proposal.

In getting ready to launch the competition, we’ve been nose-deep in data, and we thought we’d share some of our findings with you. The analysis is by no means a scientific, but some clear trends emerged, and they can tell us some interesting things about how New Yorkers think of their city—and what design can do to improve it. Read more about what people were most interested in, after the jump.

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