Brooklyn Bridge Park's multiplicity

In 2016, I joined a recreational volleyball league that had us play weekly Tuesday nights at the Brooklyn Bridge Park at Pier 6. While I never took to volleyball, I absolutely fell in love with the park that summer. Every time I visited, I realized that the design of the park met a different need the city and its inhabitants had. For example, each pier had been carefully redesigned from its original industrial shipping use to meet New York City’s need for more outdoor space. The park now has over 4 piers and 1.3 miles of green space that include basketball courts, soccer fields, and of course volleyball courts. The piers are still used for some of their original purpose with the NYC Ferry offering daily services from Pier 1 and Pier 6 to various parts of the city and private boats docked in the One 15 Marina.

Beyond the piers, the park was designed with community amenities such as grills and picnic table free for public use by the waterfront. These grills are filled in the summer with Brooklyn families enjoying the piers, outdoor space, and amazing Manhattan skyline views.

The park was specifically designed to encourage biodiversity with 4 distinct ecosystems that existed in the Hudson Harbor before European colonization - freshwater wetlands, woodlands, meadows, and salt marshes. Each of these ecosystems uniquely support wildlife such as birds, butterflies, and turtles. In the summer, the piers are teeming with life with over 12,000 species of wildlife that are native and help promote local biodiversity.

Beyond public enjoyment, the Brooklyn Bridge Park protects the city. The park’s designers, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc, thought deeply through the impact of climate change on NYC in the coming years. The park hugs the Brooklyn coastline which makes it a unique opportunity to protect the rest of the landmass. By designing the park with varied topography as high as 30 feet, the park acts as barrier to reduce the impact of storm surges and rising sea levels. In addition to the planned elevation, the architects incorporated specific soil and vegetation that could cope well with the brackish harbor waters such as pitch pine plants or well draining soil.

The park is a clear example of how urban planning can solve multiple challenges, reuse spaces, and most importantly improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers. It also highlights how we need more ideas like this faster given the challenges of urban living. The dream of Brooklyn Bridge Park took over 30 years to come to fruition due to various obstacles and bureacracy on the local and state level. NYC needs more innovative solutions like Brooklyn Bridge Park to tackle the challenges brought about by evolving economies, gentrification, and climate change.