Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brooklyn Bridge Park: A Dying Waterfront Transformed is a remarkable telling of an important story. It's a provocative narrative of tenacity, community activism, politics, perseverance, contentious decision making, and strategic solutions. For anyone interested in urban planning, this book is a must-read. Ultimately, Witty and Krogius remind us that the public triumph of a beautiful park is well worth a good fight!" -- -Deborah Schwartz president of the Brooklyn Historical Society "As a former parks commissioner, it is amazing to me that a spectacular new waterfront park built at great public expense could be as controversial as Brooklyn Bridge Park. This excellent book details how complicated and difficult it was to conceive, design, finance, and build the park and chronicles the dedication and ingenuity of the many who made it happen." -- -Betsy Gotbaum former commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and New York City Public Advocate (2002-2009) "Only in Brooklyn! A tired waterfront becomes a great park and welcomes the world to New York's hippest borough. This fine book tells the inside story of how it happened, of how government works in the real world, of how citizen-actors and political pros produced an urban masterpiece." -- -Marty Markowitz former Brooklyn Borough president and twenty-three-year member of the New York State Senate "Brooklyn Bridge Park recounts the long-running saga of high-stakes competition over the fate of a spectacular piece of waterfront real estate. This fascinating account describes all the challenges and reveals the fascinating combination of politics and process, 'pluck and luck,' behind the result. The 'Grand Bargain' that made the park possible is a grand story." -- -Ellen Schall Senior Presidential Fellow at New York University and Martin Cherkasky Professor of Health Policy and Management at NYU Wagner "More than a simple history of the park, this book digs beneath the surface to explore why and how this environmental masterpiece came to be." -Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Stage 2. All Hell Breaks Lose a. Sidebar: Early Park Seed 3. The Manheim Years 4. A New Game: Origins of the Local Development Corporation 5. Strange Bedfellows 6. Recruiting the Team 7. Public Planning 8. Public Planning Continues 9. Money and Political Gamesmanship a. Sidebar: "Pier 4" 10. Breaking the Logjam 11. From Theoretical to Concrete 12. Housing "In the Park" 13. At Long Last, Shovels 14. Politics and Housing 15. The Park Begins to Materialize 16. Deep Differences Over a Nineteenth Century Relic 17. An Ill Wind Blows Good and Bad 18. The Growing Experience 19. Learning from the Site 20. Housing and Politics, Continued 21. Parks, Parks, Parks 22. Reflections on Brooklyn Bridge Park
