NYC WATERFRONT FUTURES

Governors Island, July 18, 2009 is a very thrilling place.  A critical shift in ways of thinking about cities in general and New York City in particular, is adrift.  The island is filled with pragmatic proposals by the New York City Waterfront Alliance on how to shift thinking about energy and resources in New York City to a different register that focuses on the city's natural resources: water, river estuaries, currents, Hudson River ecology.  The proposals include expanding water commuting in the future planning of New York City, emphasize the waterfront in children's education and growth, bring waterfront thinking to inland communities who have access to water but do not think of it as an option, stop sludging the rivers, dynamize community investment in contaminated sites for reclamation projects.  New York City finally has the single biggest vision since the heavy hand of Robert Moses and his car defined modernity. Finally, New York City is reclaiming its waterfront as a critical aspect of its everyday future- not just a place for trade, work, industrial labor and illicit social exchanges.  The waterfront is slowly transforming New York City into its uncharted identity as an archipelago of islands in conversation across distinctive local ecologies of waterfronts.