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The Topic
NYC's waterfront is roughly 600 miles long. Include metropolitan New Jersey and Westchester, and the total increases to over 1000 miles. This metropolitan waterfront is as diverse as it is long. Its uses range from oil depots, cruise ship terminals and modern container ports to marinas, recreational esplanades, and bathing beaches. Contrary to reputation and expectation, the harbor, its shores and its waterways are integral to the region's economy and quality of life.
The Context
The harbor is one of the few places in the metropolitan area where large spaces still exist and where usage patterns are dynamic. Unlike most urban land areas, the regions' waterways belong to everyone. Consequently, many uses compete for the same space. Diverse concurrent uses and a clash of competing interests shape the character of today's metropolitan maritime crossroads. In the shared world of the waterfront, issues are complex, and political values intermingle. Within each issue is a frothy mixture of economics and ecology, community and bureaucracy, freedom of action and the desire to be protected from the actions of others. Improving water quality makes the competition among users more robust. Fish, waterfowl, birds of prey, and marshlands are returning. Recreational uses proliferate, competing with other uses. In commerce, long-term harbor users are expanding operations. Growth in trade requires smarter port operations and more acreage for containers. Deeper dredging of ship channels and expanded municipal facilities are planned. Privately owned ferries crisscross the waters carrying commuters by the tens of thousands. Despite all this, the waterfront is still part of larger natural processes. Twice a day, vast seas flood into and ebb from the harbor, which determine the pace of maritime commerce. Daily, the waters change the harbor's geography, creating and denying access to mudflats, shellfish, docks and harbors. Flux at the water's edge holds peril and promise.
Hudson River Park Launches 'Big City Fishing' Program
Hudson River Park launched its Big City Fishing program Monday. Would-be anglers can head to Pier 84 and Pier 46 in Manhattan. Rods, reels, bait and fishing instruction are all free.
Plan to Bring Back Oysters in Sunset Park Unsuccessful
A plan to repopulate the dirty waters off Brooklyn with oysters was foiled — err soiled — by the harbor’s abundant silt, which clogged baskets that housed the bivalves and claimed the lives of hundreds of mollusks.
Bayside Marina Makes Room for Kayaks

City Proposes Concrete Walkway for Coney Island
City officials are pushing a plan that would replace the tropical hardwood that supports and covers the 86-year-old Coney Island boardwalk with a 39,600- ton concrete walkway. The concrete, which comes tinted, would be cut to resemble wooden planks.
Plan for Coney Island Amphitheater Faces Opposition
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz wants to build a $64 million Coney Island amphitheater across from two synagogues - even though a city law bans amplified sound during religious services. The law could mean that the glitzy, open-air arena in Asser Levy Park would be barred from hosting concerts on Friday and Saturday, the two biggest moneymaking nights. Opponents hope the glitch could derail the arena - which they argue is too big and would ruin the park.
At Sea in the City
by William Kornblum

Heartbeats in the Muck: A Dramatic Look at the History, sea Life and Environment of New York Harbor
by John Waldman

Manhattan Water-Bound
by Anne Buttenwieser

The Meadowlands
by Robert Sullivan

The Riverkeepers
by John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

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Along the Shore, A Turning Point

by Roland Lewis
October 2007

Nearly 400 years ago Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor. In the centuries that followed, the harbor and waterways of New York and New Jersey were the front door through which settlers and millions thereafter came and created our metropolitan area. Over time, however, the waterfront became our back door. Filled with commerce and industry, the water's edge was where we relegated our most noxious and undesirable land uses. Now, however, with changes in industry and a rediscovery of the commercial and recreational potential of our waterfront, the New York and New Jersey Harbor has become our front door one again.

There are over 700 miles of waterfront in the harbor estuary. Much of that waterfront is now "in play" and over the next generation will be transformed. This is a matter of land use, development and planning for the City of New York and for the towns and cities on the Jersey side. But more than that it is also a matter of equity for the 20 million citizens who live on the series of islands and peninsulas that comprise the New York metropolitan region. As reflected in the $1,200 per square foot waterfront condos and in the hundreds of millions of dollars that the city and state governments on both sides of the Hudson are investing in new parks, our waterfront has become a very valuable and precious resource.

Development decisions made today will affect how generations of New Yorkers and New Jersey residents relate and enjoy the water around them. We are living at a time when we will decide whether we to exchange highways, abandoned factories and fences for a sterile wall of condominiums that will effectively once again lock our waterfront away from the people or whether we will create an accessible waterfront.

A luxury condominium, 15 feet of walkway, a wrought iron fence and a bulkhead do not make for an inviting waterfront. Instead, a variety of uses and destinations will make a waterfront that New Yorkers will flock to. We can create town docks in waterfront neighborhoods such as those found on the North Shore of Long Island. We can build museums, theaters and restaurants like those that have revitalized the south side of the Thames in London. We can enjoy and connect our harbor and riverside parks as they have done in San Francisco with Golden Gate Park and the Presidio.

The creative and entrepreneurial spirit that is so central to the character of New York and New Jersey should be reflected on our waterfront. Our waterfront can be as diverse and the vital as the neighborhoods that borders it. The sterile "Esplanadia" that has been built on too much of our waterfront is the least we can do. The best way we can commemorate Hudson's arrival to these shores 400 years ago is to creatively imagine and implement much more.

The Waterfront Alliance has convened thinkers, practitioners and activists working in and around the waterfront to come up with an action agenda for change for our harbor and waterways. In the coming months Gotham Gazette will feature a series of articles from the alliance that will outline critical waterfront issues. Topics discussed will include creating swimmable and fishable waters, harbor education, waterfront recreation, water mass transit, strengthening the waterfront labor force and AquaTecture, waterfront and water design.

Stay tuned to Gotham Gazette in the months ahead for more in this series.

Roland Lewis is president and CEO of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.

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