by Liam Pitt
Introduction: The East River
The water by which it is separated from the Mahatans, which is improperly called the East River, for it is nothing else than an arm of the sea, beginning in the bay on the west and ending in the sea on the east.[1]
During his travels in September of 1679, Dutch colonist Jasper Danckaerts noted in his journal that the narrow body of water known as the East River flanking the east coast of Manhattan had been misnamed—it is not a river, but an estuary connecting Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps the “East Tidal Estuary” simply did not have the same ring to it. However trivial it may seem, this distinction must be considered in relation to land, water, and civilization on the island of Manhattan—a relationship defined by commodification, conflict, and compromise. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association defines an estuary as “a partially enclosed body of water, and its surrounding coastal habitats, where saltwater from the ocean mixes with fresh water from rivers or streams.”[2] The East River is a dynamic ecosystem, as observed by Danckaerts centuries ago. In his description of the estuary, he details the variations in water depth in relation to the tide, rocky areas to be avoided, and the dramatic fluctuations in the current depending on ones location on the water. For hundreds of years the estuary was the primary location for maritime activity, its shores increasingly industrialized over time. While the East River is not the only body of water relevant to Manhattan, this research situates the East River as the most applicable reference point for coastal reconstruction.
The water of the East River has always served as a commodity for the civilizations living along its shores. For example, the tides were used in the early nineteenth century to grind wheat and power machines that produced textiles.[3] Later, in the early twenty-first century, plans were proposed to build turbines on the floor of the East River to harness the renewable energy of the tides. Over a century later, this concept continues to be tested and developed through studies such as the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project. Its natural resources have been utilized since before European settlement, namely its once abundant oyster population. It has been estimated that at the time of Dutch settlement, New York Harbor contained nearly half of the world’s oysters. The Lenape people ate large quantities of them, leaving behind massive piles of shells. Today, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the East River make them unsafe for consumption.[4]
One of the more unfortunate ways in which the East River has been utilized is its colonial status as a dumping ground for city sewage and waste. As early as the mid nineteenth century, efforts were made to restrict the amount of waste being dumped by factories. However, environmental preservation efforts were no match for the rapidly increasing population. By 1910, over seven million gallons of sewage flooded into the East River, decreasing oxygen levels in the water. This catastrophic pollution killed off much of the seagrass and diminished biodiversity of the ecosystem. For context, it may be nearly inconceivable to imagine a time when the water surrounding Manhattan was known for its abundance of seahorses, rare sturgeons, and edible crustaceans. While the contamination levels are slowly waning, coming in contact with water from the East River remains relatively unsafe. As recorded by historian Ted Steinberg, an individual during the turn of the nineteenth century recalled an earlier condition of the water: “I remember the time, gentlemen, when you could go in twelve feet of water and you could see the pebbles on the bottom of this river.”[5]
Environmental concerns over the East River are nothing new to the Lenape people or New Yorkers. However, they have advanced to a level beyond the local threat of contamination. In the twenty-first century, Manhattan must begin to prepare for an even more catastrophic prospect with far-reaching and irreversible implications: climate change.
Manhattan Underwater
And in the future, all that was once unprecedented becomes quickly routine. Remember Hurricane Sandy? By 2100, floods of that scale are expected as many as seventeen times more often in New York.[6]
Climate journalist Wallace-Wells offers a distressing glimpse of the present and predicted consequences of climate change. According to one recorded estimate, global temperatures are rising ten times faster than at any point in the past 66 million years.[7] Wallace-Wells reports on the increase in extreme weather globally, including intensified rainfall and a higher frequency of unexpected thunderstorms in New York. The damages of this extreme weather will be further intensified by rising sea levels worldwide. As Arctic ice sheets melt, the coastlines of the world map as we recognize it may be dramatically redrawn. The uneven distribution of these vulnerabilities—let us not forget that the average American emits enough carbon to melt 10,000 tons of ice annually—cannot be understated. Wallce-Wells writes that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet alone would, over mere centuries, raise sea levels around six meters, enough to drown cities like Miami, New York, London, and Shanghai.[8]
The quote at the beginning of this section reflects upon the unprecedented damages of Hurricane Sandy, an event often reckoned symbolic of the ramifications of global warming. The storm set a new precedent for extreme weather events in New York, the first example of what Wallace-Wells predicts may become the new normal.
Hurricane Sandy
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit New York City. A storm of this magnitude had never before reached New York. The scale of its damages was unprecedented: 43 deaths, nearly 90,000 buildings flooded, close to two million people without power, and a total of 19 billion dollars in damages to the infrastructure of the city.[9] Many buildings continue to recover from the effects of the flooding even today, mold being one prevalent issue. Scholarly debates continue to grapple with attribution and detection, considering whether climate change contributed to the intensity of Hurricane Sandy.
New York City has hardly ever been a location synonymous with the word “vulnerable,” in relation to flooding. One might object that far more precarious situations exist—think of Venice, for example. Yet, in the face of climate change, the glass and steel towers of New York may prove no stronger than a sinking city on stilts. Rising sea levels put coastal cities in a vulnerable position as the shoreline of Manhattan becomes increasingly exposed to extreme weather and storm surge.
Regardless, for many in the scientific community, the powerful storm surge of Sandy served as a warning for vulnerabilities to come. Geologists J. Bret Bennington and E. Christa Farmer note that “this region is highly vulnerable to Atlantic storms and will become even more so as sea levels continue to rise and ocean temperatures continue to warm over the next century. Superstorm Sandy, for all of the destruction and misery that the storm inflicted on the region, was a timely wake-up call and harbinger of things to come.”[10]
This wake-up call did not go unnoticed by the likes of NYC Mayor Bloomberg. Months after the storm, in 2013, his office released a 430 page climate resiliency plan, titled the “Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency.” The report contained 250 recommendations and ideas on how to prevent further catastrophe. If every plan were to be enacted, it would cost around 19.5 billion dollars, but would combat an estimated 90 billion dollars in damages by the middle of the century. At the time, Bloomberg had established the most comprehensive climate resiliency program of any city worldwide. Its significance lies in the recognition of the risks of climate change to New York City. Some of the prescient data released in the report includes: sea levels are rising faster than they were thought to have been four years prior; there will be an estimated 11 inches of sea level rise by the 2020s and up to 2.5 ft by the 2050s; New York may have three times as many days with temperatures above 90 degrees by the 2050s. Mayor Bloomberg addressed the need for a more resilient waterfront in New York:
We can do nothing and expose ourselves to an increasing frequency of Sandy-like storms that do more and more damage, or we can abandon the waterfront. Or, we can make the investments necessary to build a stronger, more resilient New York—investments that will pay for themselves many times over in the years to come.[11]
Mayor Bloomberg solidifies the idea that the risks of climate change overpower the debate as to whether Sandy was one of its effects, further stating, “I strongly believe we have to prepare for what the scientists say is a likely scenario. Whether you believe climate change is real or not is beside the point—we can’t run the risk.”[12]
Adding Land to the City
An interactive map of Manhattan on the website for the Welikia Project demonstrates the drastic augmentations made to the coastline since 1609. The island was once much narrower than it is today. Artificially adding land to the city has been something of a tradition since the very beginning of European settlement. In 1686, the city’s Common Council began selling water lots along the shore of the East River to wealthy merchants. Merchants were obliged to fill in the lots and expand the land, and then build a minimum of a two story stone or brick building on each lot. This practice of selling water lots continued into the late 1700s and beyond, as it raised revenue through the influx of new businesses and roads while also developing a new port. The role of slavery in these projects, as well, must not be discarded. The landfill practices also acted as a way for wealthy speculators and developers to obtain prime new real estate, and for owners to charge fees for the use of their piers.[13] The twentieth century brought even greater expansion with projects like the FDR Drive and Battery Park City.
The artificial expansion of land can be seen as an extreme example of Sir William Blackstone’s proverbial understanding of humanity’s divinely granted “dominion over all the earth.” Blackstone writes about the issue of population growth and the subsequent need for expansion, an issue that has evidently existed for centuries.
As the world by degrees grew more populous, it daily became more difficult to find out new spots to inhabit, without encroaching upon former occupants; and, by constantly occupying the same individual spot, the fruits of the earth were consumed, and its spontaneous produce destroyed, without any provision for a future supply or succession.[14]
When this text was written in the late 1700s, Blackstone was referring primarily to the need to find new lands to toil. The desire for expansion he refers to derives from agricultural necessities. At the same time, this concept can be interpreted and applied from a more contemporary perspective for the modern age, especially in relation to the expansion of Manhattan.
Instead of finding new spots to inhabit, New York has built and continues to construct extensions. This new land is not the result of nature, but rather the product of human labor. The implications of this distinction were made palpable in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy exposed the artifice of a large percentage of Manhattan’s shoreline. Much of the inundated zones, most noticeably on the Lower East Side, were examples of land being reclaimed by the sea. Manhattan was briefly recaptured by nature, its original form revealed for the first time in over four hundred years. Today, many are experiencing the repercussions of exhausting not one plot of land, but an entire globe. An uneven distribution of these repercussions on subsidized housing complexes in New York City is a further consequence of unequal and violent structures. We need not occupy new land, but find alternative ways to provide for and protect the future of humanity, to enable the succession of life on Earth.
Economist Henry George explores what it means to make “improvements” to the land and its implications for land ownership. Ultimately, he contends that if one makes improvements to land, one is only given title to the improvements themselves, not to the land itself. “If I clear a forest, drain a swamp, or fill a bog,” he writes, “all I can justly claim is the value given by these exertions. It gives me no right to the land itself.”[15] George makes an eerily relevant statement about the extent to which improvements can be made to land in contradiction to its natural state: “It is the greater that swallows up the less; not the less that swallows up the greater. Nature does not proceed from humans, but humans from nature. And it is into the bosom of nature that we and all our works must return again.” Perhaps Sandy instantiates how New York may never hold title to its landfills, but only to the improvements made for the people living on them—perhaps the greater will swallow up the less, in the end.
Hurricane Sandy incited immediate calls to action to create a land barrier around Manhattan. Plans had been drafted many years before 2013, but Sandy demonstrated the urgent necessity of their execution. Bloomberg’s initiative to expand lower Manhattan with a hurricane protection barrier was met with compelling counterpoints. Historian Ted Steinberg revealed his own reservations about adding more land to Manhattan to a reporter for Gothamist News in March 2019: “That may have worked back in the 1700s,” he argues, “to be doing the same thing you’ve been doing hundreds and hundreds of years ago, doesn’t seem to me to be particularly original, creative, or wise, under the circumstances.”[16] Steinberg summarizes succinctly the contradictions of looking to combat climate change with land expansion in New York:
The scientific community is telling us we’re living in a world of natural limits and human vulnerability, and people don’t want to believe that, and people in authority don’t want to believe that, and real estate in New York doesn’t want to believe that. But frankly, that’s what the science says. Seventeen percent of the city was flooded during [Superstorm Sandy] and much of that land is land that was reclaimed from the sea.[17]
Essentially, New York is left with two options. The city can allow it’s shoreline to be reclaimed by the ocean, or it can rely on expansion as a means to protect the city, at least temporarily. Naturally, the city has chosen the latter. While Steinberg is not entirely off the mark in his criticisms, it would be difficult to make an argument against saving the city, even if only to protect it for another century or two. The point being made is not that creating a barrier is a completely ineffective strategy; Steinberg is not opposed to preserving the shoreline. He is invoking the argument that we must acknowledge the trap of relying on seawalls and landfills as the main solution to a potentially catastrophic global concern. There may be an unrealized danger to large scale projects that aim to battle the effects of global warming. A predominant theme throughout the development of the project to be discussed in the remainder of this research paper, the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, is the design appeal of its final construction. When land is artificially “improved” and unnaturally sculpted by human beings, our relationship to it changes. There are many variable outcomes when land becomes a subject of design, one possibility being that design becomes a form of distraction.
The Plan
This section must be prefaced with an acknowledgment that developing a streamlined linear developmental timeline for an undertaking of this scale is inordinately complex. Part of what makes New York’s climate resiliency plans difficult to untangle are the number of agents involved, from investors to designers to engineers and community boards. The most challenging aspect, however, is the fact that these plans are constantly being altered, delayed, and often cancelled entirely. Initiatives lose funding, communities contest developers and vice versa, and unforeseen design challenges arise, creating an ever-changing image of the present reality of the situation. This is to state openly that the version of events in this paper may be simplified or narrowed down, but are nonetheless relevant to the current state of the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project.
The Big U
In June 2013, a competition called Rebuild by Design was launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in response to Hurricane Sandy. The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force partnered with nonprofit, philanthropic, and academic organizations to generate innovative solutions, incentivized by HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds set aside for the winning proposals. One of the selected proposals was a plan created by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, designers, architects and engineers known as the Big U.[18] They proposed a series of elevated parks and walls surrounding lower Manhattan, with a goal of constructing 10 miles of protective barriers around the coastline, each segment responding to each community’s physical, social and economic environment.
The East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR)
While the construction of the entire Big U proposal has not been fully funded, HUD has provided 335 million dollars to fund the beginning of the ESCR section of the project. This section of land has been prioritized for reasons previously discussed in this paper: Much of the Lower East Side coastline is a product of landfilling, meaning that is can be easily reclaimed by the East River. The stretch of land alongside which the ESCR is to be constructed was some of the most heavily devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Members of the Rebuild by Design team stress that the land is particularly vulnerable, as it has the deepest floodplain in Manhattan. Rebuild by Design has stated that another reason to prioritize the ESCR is to protect the dense population of the area, many members of which live in low income housing and public housing at risk of being destroyed.[19]
The project will span 2.5 miles of urban coastline, from Montgomery Street to E 25th St. It is split into two parts, Project Area One which extends from Montgomery Street to the East River Park near East 13th Street, and Project Area Two, which encompasses the FDR Drive right-of-way, the Con Edison East 13th Street Substation and the East River Generating Station, Murphy Brothers Playground, Stuyvesant Cove Park, Asser Levy Recreational Center and Playground, as well as in-street segments along East 20th Street and East 25th Street. The current plan, in order to maintain funding from HUD, must prepare for a predicted one hundred year flood plan. It is described on the NYC government website for the ESCR as a “protection system that will reduce the risk of flooding and facilitate access to the waterfront, creating improved public spaces and enhanced natural areas,” with the intention of protecting the city against rising sea levels while “providing social and environmental benefits to the community the other ninety- nine percent of the time.”[20]
The “other ninety-nine percent of the time” mentioned in this description may be the most noteworthy aspect of the ESCR proposal. A major component of the ESCR stressed by the city government and Rebuild by Design is its function as a community space, as a safer and more aesthetically pleasing point of access to the waterfront.
The Intersection of Design and Climate Change
In a 2017 project-update presentation, Carrie Grassi of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency laid out design plans for the ESCR, revealing the team’s overarching question: “How does this resilient flood-protection infrastructure double as a place for people?” Grassi makes a telling statement about the direction of the project, emphasizing the point that “We don’t want to wall ourselves off.”[21]
Design and the Community
A salient aspect of the design of the ESCR is its intended reliance on community input. Monthly community meetings are held to discuss the plans, along with interactive workshops in which community members could contribute to the design and work with 3D models of the ESCR. The team has an entire timeline dedicated solely to community engagement, with stakeholder meetings with groups including New Yorkers for Parks, the Regional Plan Association, the Lower East Side Power Partnership, as well as community board and council member meetings with the CB3 Parks Committee and the CB6 Land Use Committee. The project requires an incredibly wide net of approval to progress forward, a tedious undertaking that involves federal, state, and city agencies. While the community has been promoted as having the loudest voice in the design process, these intentions have not been perfectly implemented. In the fall of 2018, the city redrew much of the project design, undoing years of community planning. While this redesign allowed for a reduced construction time and improvements to the efficacy of the structure, some members of the community felt blindsided. A group called the East River Alliance formed in March 2019, voting against the current project as they feel it is being “fast-tracked” unnecessarily.[22] Lower East Side neighborhoods along the East River will inevitably contain the population most prominently affected by the project design. There is a sentiment of caution against letting the city have too much power over the transformation of their coastline.
Conclusion: The Climate Change Aesthetic
Digital renderings of the planned construction clearly demonstrate the impact the ESCR may have for generations of nearby communities. Perfectly manicured lawns, strategically placed trees hiding the mechanical infrastructure, basketball courts, tennis courts, soccer fields, and more cover the reimagined coastline. The renderings show families and couples lounging by the water, children playing and flying kites under a sunny sky—an ostensibly perfect utopian vision. Beneath the lush green landscape, one could easily forget the structure’s true purpose.
The possibility that these glossy renderings belie intentions beyond climate change resiliency and community benefits must not be ignored. An implicit irony exists beneath the framework of coastal resiliency, an undeniably perverse ideology behind the intersection of land, design, and climate change. There is a pervasive sense of branding around the ESCR, a subtle acknowledgement of the fact that in settler-colonial geographies, land itself can become a marketable product. When this polished new piece of waterfront land is constructed, it will inevitably alter the identity of the portion of the Lower East Side that it aims to temporarily preserve. What are the chances that the value of land in these neighborhoods will remain unaffected by a beautiful new stretch of grassy parks with uninhibited access to the waterfront? To what extent will the ESCR protect community members living in low income and public housing from extreme weather as promised before increased speculation and new development drives them out? The ESCR design process entails the suggestion that as New York City combats climate change, it is also capitalizing on it.
Construction of the ESCR is officially set to commence in the spring of 2020. On a fundamental level, this project reflects an omnipresent desire to make the Earth itself a subject of human organization, even as its future becomes increasingly precarious. At its completion, the ESCR will represent a new wave of ideology in response to our warming planet: it will exemplify an ideally aestheticized topography of climate change resiliency.
***
[1] Jasper Danckaerts, Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons), 51.
[2] “Estuaries,” National Ocean Service Education, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, last modified December 19, 2004, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/estuaries/ estuaries01_whatis.html.
[3] Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1,312.
[4] Kenneth Jackson, The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 392.
[5] Ted Steinberg, Gotham Unbound: the Ecological History of Greater New York (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 163.
[6] David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (New York: Random House, 2019), 139.
[7] Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, 112.
[8] Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, 112.
[9]“Sandy and Its Impacts,” A Stronger, More Resilient New York, NYC Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, last modified June 11, 2013, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/sirr/downloads/pdf/Ch_1_SandyImpacts_FINAL_singles.pdf.
[10] J. Bret Bennington, and E. Christa Farmer, Learning from the Impacts of Superstorm Sandy (London: Academic Press, 2015), 4.
[11] “Mayor Bloomberg Presents the City’s Long-Term Plan to Further Prepare for the Impacts of a Changing Climate,” City of New York, last modified June 11, 2013, https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/200-13/mayor-bloomberg-presents- city-s-long-term-plan-further-prepare-the-impacts-a-changing.
[12] “Mayor Bloomberg Presents the City’s Long-Term Plan to Further Prepare for the Impacts of a Changing Climate,” City of New York.
[13] Burrows and Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, 343; 424.
[14] William Blackstone, “Of Property, in General,” in Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) (London: Lonang Institute, 2014), https://lonang.com/library/ reference/blackstone-commentaries-law-england/bla-201/.
[15] Henry George, “Seventh Part: Justice of the Remedy,” in Progress and Poverty (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1879), 341.
[16] Christopher Robbins, ”To Fight Climate Change, NYC May Expand Lower Manhattan Into East River,” Gothamist, March 8, 2019, http://gothamist.com/2019/03/08/lower_manhattan_seaport_landfill.php.
[17] Christopher Robbins, ”To Fight Climate Change.”
[18] “Rebuild by Design,” US Department of Housing and Urban Development, accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.hud.gov/sandyrebuilding/rebuildbydesign.
[19] “Rebuild by Design,” US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
[20] “Vision,” The East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, City of New York, accessed May 10, 2019, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/escr/vision/vision.page.
[21] “Rebuild by Design,” US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
[22] Sydney Pereira, “Overhaul Of Storm Protection Plan Outrages Downtown Residents,” Patch, March 6, 2019, https://patch.com/new-york/east-village/overhaul-storm-protection-plan-outrages-downtown-residents.