hey, neat! the waterfront! let's build a warehouse! no, a sewage station!

map: nyc dep't of city planning

when i lived in manhattan, i would go running along the "east river park." by that, i mean i would run along a narrow track adjacent to the east river, at one point darting in between the 14th street electricity generating station (which recently caught fire) and the fdr expressway, hoping a semi-rig would not skip over the 3-foot concrete barrier. when i wasn't fearing for my life, i would look out over the east river to the areas of brooklyn known as williamsburg and greenpoint. along that waterfront, abandoned warehouses and factories sat in ruins, as if they had sustained a severe shelling. i knew that the waterfront areas of old cities were sometimes not such the hot commodity for residential or recreational use, but come on, this is new york. how could that land just sit there, with so much potential, but so desolate? well, it seems that the area has been zoned for heavy manufacturing for quite a while, although heavy manufacturing is no longer what makes new york city tick. since the demise of the factories and warehouses, property owners have tried everything from building a waste transfer station to re-establishing the defunct times square porn industry.

but not so long ago, some bright person at the city planning department came up with a new plan: let's rezone! after much study, the new plan has coalesced, complete with a waterfront promenade and a series of parks, interspersed with 150- to 350- foot tall residential towers, public park space, but and 15% to 25% of the units reserved for low- and moderate-income residents.

but community opposition abounds. the community board for the area and the brooklyn borough president have rejected the city's plan, and locals have organized to demand more affordable housing (40%), more public space and no luxury high-rises. for more detail, see http://www.northbrooklynalliance.org/.

i tend to agree with the community groups on the high-rises. why must they be so tall? and why right on the water, rather than upland? the affordable housing i'm more ambivalent about. it all depends on the definition of "affordable," and there must be sensitivity to a spectrum of income levels, rather than just high and low. as for local residents' feelings that they have a say in the process, the city's land use review law certainly recognizes public input, and developers are better off asking for re-zoning if they have the community's support. but i think the really interesting question is: when and how do people begin to feel like they own their neighborhood, so much so that they are willing to fight for it? this is a theme i will return to in future posts.

but while all this winds its way through the land use review process, don't miss what could be your last chance to view the crumbling warehouses of greenpoint, those post-modern remains of a lost civilization, hulking darkly in semi-isolation along the shore of the east river. for optimum viewing, i suggest a nice run along the east river park.

[for more coverage, see diane cardwell, "city sees way to get mix of homes on brooklyn waterfront," n.y. times (dec. 27, 2004)].

the o.c. now: salt creek point, orange county, california 2004

photo: kenneth & gabrielle adelman; california coastal records project

note: this photo was taken before the building of the st. regis, a mega-luxury resort, in that patch of dirt in the middle-left of the frame. the building on top of the point is the ritz-carlton.

the o.c. then: salt creek point, 1972

photo: cal. coastal records project

book review: joan didion, "where i was from"

i grew up in orange county, california, in the 1980's and early 1990's. as you may not know from recent television melodramas, parts of the county "back then" maintained a vestige of rural charm. i remember watching cows grazing on the hillside across from a friend's house; i remember waking up one morning to greet a coyote skulking across my backyard. in the intervening decade -- which can be considered an eon in california-time -- southern orange county has taken on the mantle of a luxury beach resort, complete with sunburned transplants from the rest of the country playing golf in crushed-marble sand traps, and shopping in lines of pink stuccoed strip malls.

if you can detect my disdain for the newcomers, you are halfway into the california experience. in "where i was from," joan didion, a native californian of a few generations, peels back the california mystique to its bone. she, like most of us who grew up there, harbors a deep and abiding love for the unique, at times ancient, landscapes the state holds in abundance. she, too, seems to regret every new freeway and subdivision. but she finds that the heartwrenching development of the state's magical pastures is the essence of california, and it has been since the gold rush. from the railroad barons to agribusiness, to oil, aerospace, cookie-cutter suburbs and prisons, the phenomena of "selling the future to the highest bidder" has led to the confused sprawl that blankets many of the inhabited areas of the state, and leaves some of us wondering whether perhaps some of the traditions our forebears left back east weren't so bad after all. "discussion of how california has 'changed,' then, tends locally to define the more ideal california as that which existed at whatever past point the speaker first saw it."

for me, that was the cow grazing and the coyote skulking through the backyard. it will never be the same, but after reading this book, i, too, have accepted california for the constant change that it is, and i feel lucky to have been there back then.