Description
Book SynopsisThis book recounts the grassroots effort to transform Brooklyn's defunct piers into an urban oasis. The story of Brooklyn Bridge Park also speaks to larger issues confronting all cities, including the development of postindustrial spaces and the ways to balance public and private interests without sacrificing creative vision or sustainable goals.
Trade ReviewAlmost any leisurely walk in New York will produce the question: What was this place once? A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park tells the amazing story of the people who also asked about such a place: What could it be someday? The answer changed the New York City waterfront forever. -- John Hockenberry, host of the public radio program The Takeaway A fascinating story of how local activists, politicians, designers, and developers argued, protested, and slowly worked together to create one of New York City's most innovative, thriving, and controversial parks. For three decades, Brooklyn residents engaged in a rich debate about their waterfront. What makes a park a successful public space? Who should decide? Nancy Webster and David Shirley's engaging book shows us just how complex these questions are. -- Suleiman Osman, author of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York Here is a masterful compilation of the voices whose struggles and persistence over time realized a vision to turn a closed-off industrial waterfront into a vibrant, twenty-first-century park, open to all. -- Ann L. Buttenwieser, the "Floating Pool Lady" Over the past few decades, cities across the United States have undertaken numerous, large-scale efforts to make themselves livable and sustainable. These projects do not suddenly appear, and what is important for urban scholars, activists, and policy makers is what has to be done to make them happen. In A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Webster and Shirley provide a highly informative and fascinating history of the governmental, organizational, community, and interpersonal politics without which New York City's newest grand public space would not have come to be. -- Robert Beauregard, professor of urban planning, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University Webster and Shirley take you through every contentious step of the park's evolution from the 1980s until today... Along the way, Brooklyn Bridge Park paints a fascinating portrait. The Bowery Boys
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Evolution of the Waterfront 1. What Shall We Do with the Piers? 2. Fighting Back 3. The Coalition 4. The "13 Guiding Principles" 5. Banging Their Cups on the High Chair 6. Changing of the Guard 7. Tearing Down the Barbed Wire 8. The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good 9. A Park at Last Notes Bibliography Index
