by Fred Kent

While forward-looking cities from Abu Dhabi to Vancouver to Hong Kong are increasingly moving away from past mistakes by realizing that their waterfronts are sacred properties belonging to everyone, New York’s waterfront “revitalization” efforts persist in the privatization of public lands. Battery Park City embodies the monotony that characterizes excessively passive and privatized waterfront development. Yet, sadly, these same mistakes have been replicated at prime waterfront locations in Queens’ Long Island City, Red Hook’s Ikea site, and much of the Hudson River Park. This trend looks to be continue in forthcoming developments, including Brooklyn Bridge Park.

New York's waterfront is a long way from living up to its full potential. This is why PPS has placed New York's waterfront in our Hall of Shame-a listing of the world's most underperforming public spaces.

New York City has become a showcase for the landscape architecture profession where park projects inspire acclaim from other architects, but fail to attract public users. The entire stretch along Manhattan’s west side, called Hudson River Park, features dunes and grasses modeled after the beaches of the Hamptons. The park’s bike esplanade succeeds in creating an attractive, continuous pathway, but the rest of the park lacks significant destinations to draw people, and consequently the bikeway feels like a speedway mimicking the adjacent Westside Highway. While iconic design statements, such as Gehry’s IAC Headquarters, dot the boulevard’s street front, the sidewalks below remain void of the vitality necessary to create lively waterfront connections.

As long as roads are allowed to dominate choice public spaces and moving cars is considered more important than building a great city, Manhattan’s waterfront will continue to disappoint residents and tourists alike. At the same time, the tremendous potential of the Brooklyn waterfront, which is greatly enhanced by the absence of major roads, is being undermined by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Plan that combines an overblown architectural statement with passive uses and privatization. The design for landscaping the park has neglected community input, resulting in a plan that gives no thought to how people would actually want to use such a spot. This is seen most clearly in the perched wetland planned for its most prominent pier. Additionally, the rich possibilities for creating inland waterways including Newtown Creek, the Gowanus Canal, and the Bronx River are ignored.

New York could quickly and marvelously transform its waterfront by learning from the example of Paris Plage, Vancouver’s Granville Island, People’s Park in Copenhagen, and Hunters Point’s Water Taxi Beach in its own backyard of Queens, all of which have all evolved into beloved public attractions despite minimal funding.

New York City is endowed with one of the world’s most striking and storied waterfronts, but to make it a great place on the order of Central Park, Prospect Park, or Rockefeller Center it must learn from its mistakes and revitalize waterfront places as shining assets that offer a rich diversity of public uses at a number of distinct destinations that are well-connected to one another.

During the past year, PPS has worked on waterfronts throughout the world. We have engaged local communities in coming up with new visions for these special places and helped developers incorporate Placemaking principles into their design process. In some cities, we’ve advocated major transformation of underused and underperforming waterfronts that are cut off from life in the rest of the city.

The following is a sample of PPS waterfront work.

Embarcadero Marina Parks (San Diego, CA)

Bringing life back to a breathtaking but little-used park

Giant board games engage visitors at the Bahia del Sol celebration. Photo courtesy of Port of San Diego

PPS engaged local stakeholders in San Diego to revitalize an isolated waterfront park and help launch an exciting summer festival that capitalizes on the area’s energetic spirit and cultural diversity.

Despite breathtaking views in close proximity to downtown, the 22-acre Embarcadero Marina Parks sits mostly unused. Hard to reach without a car and virtually hidden behind a wall of high-rise hotels and a  convention center, few people took advantage of this opportunity to enjoy the Pacific Ocean right in the heart of town.

A Placemaking workshop led by PPS set the stage for a series of small but valuable improvements intended to evolve the waterfront into a popular destination for local residents, nearby employees and visitors.  These ideas were developed in conjunction with the San Diego Port District and area stakeholders who envisioned how this one-time working port could better connect to downtown and  flourish as a local gathering place.

Putting these ideas quickly into action, The Port of San Diego recently hosted  Bahia del Sol, a summer event that features interactive activities for people young and old. There was live music, salsa dancing, environmental education, drumming sessions, yoga classes and giant board games. Public art was an important part of the event, and this year local artists were invited to customize picnic tables throughout the parks. Bahia del Sol caters to people of all ages and taps into the area’s unique cultural mix.

Granville Island (Vancouver, Canada)

Keeping the vision going for a top-flight urban district

Smart management strategies have kept Granville Island a popular place for more than 30 years.

Granville Island-a mix of a public market, park, art school, community center, theater performance spaces, restaurants and unique shopping linked to downtown Vancouver by regular boat service-has been hailed for 30 years as one of the most successful urban places. Located in False Creek, an inlet connected to the ocean, it was fashioned from an old industrial site in the late 1970s.

PPS recently partnered with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which operates the 37-acre complex, to guide planning in the coming years to ensure Granville Island’s continuing success.  We facilitated meetings between CMHC staff and local stakeholders to evaluate the existing development as part of the planning process for the area. The evaluation showed that although some parts of the island were well used, others could be improved to create new destinations for people coming to the island.

Miami Baywalk (Miami, FL)

Making the connections on a new bayside promenade

The Miami Baywalk will soon link key waterfront destinations.

Miami is fortunate to have direct access to much of its waterfront. The public will soon be able to enjoy this scenic asset even more thanks to a bayfront promenade, much of which is already in place or under construction.  But several key links in the Baywalk posed vexing problems for successful completion of the mile-long trail. That’s where PPS came in. The City of Miami invited us to work with the community on a planning effort with two major goals: 1) to explore how best to create a continuous promenade along Biscayne Bay that would permanently connect  communities, activities and destinations along the route as well as link up with the Miami River Greenway; and 2) to identify opportunities for filling in missing sections of the promenade.

PPS held a community Placemaking workshop that was attended by citizens, public officials, design professionals, members of civic and cultural institutions, business owners and other stakeholders. Participants worked together to create a vision for activities, amenities and programs along the route that will create the excitement found in pedestrian waterfront promenades all over the world.

Drawing upon results from the workshop, PPS developed a series of recommendations; identified opportunities, potential partners and funders for the promenade; and offered detailed recommendations for management programs, short-term and long-term physical improvements, and potential activities and program.

Placemaking Down Under

PPS just finished a four-week barnstorming tour of Australia conducting waterfront trainings

PPS just finished an intensive four-week tour of waterfronts in Australia, facilitating local officials in Perth, Melbourne and the Gold Coast to work together on Placemaking initiatives.

During the month of August, PPS staff conducted Placemaking workshops, keynote lectures and presentations throughout Australia that focused on waterfronts and the importance of creating great destinations. We shared best-practice principles and offered advice to both residents and professionals about how to improve their process through more community input.

On the Perth waterfront, PPS conducted a “Power of 10” exercise where attendees listed their five best and worst destinations, and five with the most promise. Attendees were quickly able to assess which spaces were in need of improvement and how to capitalize on those with the most potential.

On Australia’s subtropical Gold Coast south of Brisbane, a string of waterfront cities are booming. With a focus on transportation development, PPS challenged officials to integrate each transit station with its destination rather than simply construct out-of-context facilities.

In Brisbane, a pedestrian mall and a development on the south bank of the Brisbane River are world class examples of how to create great waterfront places. But Brisbane also has the worst traffic of any city in Australia and little vision on how to change it. PPS worked with design leaders on integrating responsible waterfront street design with usable public spaces, as opposed to simply creating additional capacity for cars.