New York is a city of islands. Our abundant waterways provided a path to building a global metropolis, from the harbor’s economic hub to the Catskills’ pure drinking supply. Even though we’re surrounded by water (520 miles of waterfront to be exact) for most New Yorkers access to the waterfront can be limited. The city offers 91 public pools and 14 miles of public beaches, but one out of every four New York City children doesn’t know how to swim. Climate change is turning extreme weather events into our new normal, from record-breaking storms to intensifying heat waves, pushing our built and natural environment to its limits, and threatening our most vulnerable residents.
Moved by the rising urgency of these contradictions, the Design Trust for Public Space announced our 12th open call for project ideas on the theme of Water, inviting New Yorkers to share their solutions to the pressures exerted on the city by too much or too little water, and to propose ways to connect the five boroughs with the cultural vibrancy and memory inherent in our waterways
We received 75 pitches from architects and designers, city agencies, community organizations, artists, and impassioned neighbors alike, and selected 25 semi-finalists to submit a full proposal. Five projects will be chosen for a nine-month guided incubation to develop their ideas into tangible, funded and expert-supported initiatives, from policy briefs to art exhibitions to public space design prototypes.
We can’t wait to share the winning and semi-finalist projects with you this spring! In the meantime, we’re diving deep into stories about NYC’s water history, our ever evolving relationship to the infrastructure that connects us to water, and examining lessons from our current water landscape that can help inform future projects and transform our relationship to the water all around us.
Through weekly installations here on the public space blog, you’ll hear from a playwright and urban planner on how community theatre can inform diverse neighborhoods about flooding preparedness, an Augmented Reality artist on reimagining Black legacy and oyster culture on the waterfront, an architect on public pools and designing community water spaces for equity, a public health researcher on the history of Jamaica Bay, a Staten Island’s museum’s preservation of queer history on the New York Harbor, public space designers on using open streets for community cooling resources, an urban planner on greenways as sites of resilience, and more!
We look forward to uplifting their important progress, and working together toward building a city of water that is sustainable, resilient, and vibrant.
Read the first installation in the series here on community knowledge around living with flooding in Jamaica Bay, by the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay- CUNY Brooklyn College!
Follow us @designtrustnyc & subscribe to the public space newsletter to get notified when water blog installations drop and for Water RFP events and updates.
Interested in pitching a public space blog post idea? Contact Alexa Mauzy-Lewis, Director of Communications at amauzy@designtrust.org