“When we were planning Brooklyn Bridge Park [BBP], people kept telling us how much they wanted to be able to touch the water,” says BBP’s designer, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, recalling the hundreds of community meetings he attended in the making of this park. Simple as that request may seem, it reflects the complicated saga of our cities and their rivers — and, specifically, the tale of this narrow, irregular 1.3-mile-long stretch of waterfront in Brooklyn, New York, and its barriers to neighborhood enjoyment.
Though they live surrounded by water, most New Yorkers have never touched the city’s East or Hudson Rivers. And while both rivers are tidal estuaries, their extensively bulwarked banks scarcely register such ephemeral events as rising and falling tides.
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