Brooklyn Bridge Park must surely carry the mantle as the most controversial park in history. After decades of wrangling among neighborhood groups, urban planners and politicians, the first portions of the waterfront greenspace opened in 2010 to great fanfare and almost universal praise, even as financing question marks and controversy around real estate development in the park continued to swirl. As work continues on the remaining portions of the park, including the footbridge from Brooklyn Heights, park officials have to contend with yet another round of negative nabobism. According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the park’s design–and by extension its designer, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.–is being attacked by a group of planners as being too disconnected from the needs of most park-goers. In a scathing quotation, Project for Public Spaces head Fred Kent says, the park is “one of the deadest waterfronts ever designed,” displaying a “massive disconnect between what people want to look at and do in a place and what designers impose on them.” Matthew Urbanski, the architect of the park, counters: “We’ve created a calm foreground that allows you to appreciate the sublime beauty of the industrial urban setting.” As the Journal points out, Kent’s criticism seems to ignore the acres of programmed space–soccer fields, volleyball courts, basketball courts and marina–that are slated for the remaining piers. Based upon the throngs of people who visit the existing portions of the park on a daily basis, it doesn’t seem like the public shares Kent’s misgivings. “Brooklyn Bridge Park succeeds magnificently at being a space people want to make their own,” says The Journal. “Pier 1, the portion closest to the foot of the bridge that was one of the first completed sections, is an assemblage of placid meadows and grassy, sloping grades that make the perfect setting for picnicking and taking in the view.”
Conflict in Park Plans [Wall Street Journal]
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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Ben you are all over the place.
    1st you say:”I like to wander to the park with the kids, or the dog, or lunch”
    then in the NEXT paragraph you say:
    “But I don’t really wander thru a park. I go to a park”

    So again I dont know what your criticism is?. Its a park (more or less a ribbon park); I dont know what you expect it to be.

    I find a walk through (whats there now) magical – to have that vista of Manhattan, the Bridge and the River along a well manicured [fake]-natural setting is ‘romantic’,’magical’ etc ,etc (to me anyway). I dont know what you want from a park but I would say walking through (and sitting) in beautiful inspiring surroundings is one of the most important goals of a park (no?).

    Then as to the other aspects of a park (fields, playgrounds, recreation) this park will have that as well. I think your critique of the playground at Atlantic might have some merits but they are hardly mission critical and could be rectified. As to the fact that they will have leagues playing on those fields – virtually every field in NYC has leagues using them…If you want empty fields that you can just wander on and play 24/7 you better start looking in Sullivan or Suffolk counties.

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