On the (Brooklyn) Waterfront

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Brooklyn continues to reclaim its waterfront for public use.  The Brooklyn Heights Promenade, perched atop the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, offers a delightfully open place to…promenade…and has great views of Manhattan (even in the rain).

View of a city skyline at dusk, featuring tall buildings illuminated against a cloudy sky. A calm body of water reflects the city lights in the foreground, with a black iron fence in the bottom half of the image.

The newest piece of this collection of public spaces will be Brooklyn Bridge Park, an extensive redevelopment of the Brooklyn waterfront south of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Pier 1, the only completed section, opened while we were there.  Our lads, while not tots, gave it a thorough going over.

Child running in a park with bare trees and modern benches. Stone sculptures are scattered on a textured ground. In the background, a large suspension bridge spans across a foggy sky. Children play in a park with round seating areas, benches, and abstract sculptures shaped like a turtle and a seal. Bare trees are scattered throughout. A bridge is visible in the background under a cloudy sky.

Portions of the riverwalk had also been completed and were open.  With the rain that bedeviled our time in the borough, however, only park maintenance staff and people whose kids had been cooped up and needed exertion were about.

A rainy, overcast day by the waterfront featuring a paved pathway lined with wooden benches and metal railings. The path is bordered by a black fence and trees on one side, with a view of the water and distant buildings on the horizon.

4 Responses to “On the (Brooklyn) Waterfront”

    GK

    All very nice, but it leaves me a bit sad….

    fas.org/man/company/shipyard/nyny-1944-h93234.jpg

    The waterfront used to do things, now its another amenity. Sure, this is all better than underutilized, weedy banks on the east river, but I can’t help thinking every time a landscape architect draws a tree a longshoreman has lost his job.

    elza hisel-mccoy

    There is definitely a way of life that is falling (or long since has already fallen) away, though I think that longshoreman lost his job well before the landscape architect drew that tree. Season 2 of HBO’s “The Wire” (my favorite season) focuses on this plight in Baltimore (and beyond). Redevelopment is a rough and not always fair or democratic process. Is it inevitable? I think yes, sooner or later. Places and markets develop to suit the needs of people in a particular time and change as those needs and priorities change. Is it black-and-white? Absolutely not. Is it an improvement? And for whom? There is an amoral quality to the momentum of economic development to which we either acquiesce or resist, using whatever tools we have at our disposal, usually how we spend our money.

    GK

    Couldn’t agree more, the reclaiming (I prefer adapting) is. It is good for some, bad for some, it is for some, not for others. It just is. Amoral, as you suggest.

    Thayer-D

    I think it’s a vast improvement. NY has miles of waterfront and almost 100% of it used to be dedicated to shipping. I think New Jersey has taken the traffic that still exists for the area, so fantastic move.