New York

In New York City, Perkins+Will engages local activist groups to help shape the future of historic waterways.

- Zachary Edelson

New York City once had a thriving waterfront: The metropolis sprouted countless wharves and bulkheads through which goods moved from factories to warehouses and the world beyond. Although that commerce is long gone, planners and developers have reclaimed only a few of these postindustrial sections, such as those in Brooklyn’s Dumbo and Queens’s Long Island City. Now two plans by the architecture firm Perkins+Will aim to proactively reshape polluted, neglected stretches along Newtown Creek, Flushing Bay, and Flushing Creek into vibrant public assets.

You could be forgiven if you haven’t heard of these areas. The once heavily industrialized Newtown Creek features 11 miles of shoreline that winds along the Queens-Brooklyn border. (From 1915 to 1917, the waterway handled as much freight tonnage as the entire Mississippi River.) While the creek is highly polluted, its Superfund site designation (encoded in 2011) and subsequent cleanup could radically remake its landscape. Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, meanwhile, were significantly shaped by the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs, which filled in much of their marshland and laced the area with highways. The bay abuts multiple residential communities along with Willets Point, a formerly industrial neighborhood poised to welcome real estate developments housing 15,000 new residents.