The prospect of New York City growing to 9 million inhabitants by 2030 is an opportunity to both strengthen the city’s manufacturing economy and create a new model for resilient and mixed-use waterfront development.
New York is known for its high proportion of financial services companies, advanced educational level of its population, vast public transit system, cultural amenities, and most recently, becoming the safest large city in the US. At the same time the city has experienced a significant challenge to its quality of life. According to the most recent scorecard published by the Citizen’s Budget Commission, young, educated and entrepreneurial people to refresh its stagnated workforce are lacking in New York. This is due to a number of factors including the lack of affordable housing, long commuting times, shortage of open space, and limited entrepreneurial opportunity for urban manufacturing.
The vast industrial areas surrounding Newtown Creek offer a prime opportunity to transform one of New York’s largest industrial and least habitable areas into an innovative maker-based community. Newtown Creek forms the border between Brooklyn and Queens. A long-standing industrial zone with barge access culminating in the English Kills canal, the area has been historically underserved by municipal infrastructure and public transit. Federal ‘Superfund’ status, state Brownfield opportunity studies and city-wide industrial action plans have all laid the groundwork for actionable Newtown planning efforts to take shape. With mounting development pressure from surrounding areas, Newtown Creek demands not only stakeholder-informed, intelligent and integrated planning but also the creation of a compelling architectural vision to exemplify how manufacturing can be intimately mixed within normative buildings and city blocks.
The key to this solution is a re-thinking of New York's urban fabric to create a bold new paradigm for truly mixed-use development.
Much of New York was built around the classic 5 to 6 story mixed-use building where residents lived above the store and workshop. In many ways MakerHoods are the 21st Century re-invention of this historic paradigm. MakerHoods are built around the core principles of truly mixed-use and walkable urbanism, resilient waterfront design, and interdependent mobility planning. If applied more broadly to urban working waterfronts across the country, this new paradigm would have a transformative effect not only on our cities and cultural landscapes, but also unlock significant new opportunities in our economy.
By revitalizing existing manufacturing waterfront areas, and integrating the previously separated activities of working and living, places like NewTown can once again be engines of urban prosperity and vital cultural landscapes.