Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming an Urban Industrial Area and Creating Community

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Spring 2019 Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming an Urban Industrial Area and Creating Community Yincheng Zhang University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/larp_ms_projects Part of the Landscape Architecture Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Zhang, Yincheng, "Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming an Urban Industrial Area and Creating Community" (2019). Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects. 96. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/larp_ms_projects/96 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming an Urban Industrial Area and Creating Community Master’s Project by: Yincheng Zhang Spring 2019 1 Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming an Urban Industrial Area and Creating Community Master’s Project by Yincheng Zhang Master of Landscape Architecture Spring 2019 Frank Sleegers (Committee Chair) ____________________________________ Michael DiPasquale (Committee Member) ____________________________________ Mark Hamin (Committee Member) ____________________________________ Robert Ryan (Department Chair) ____________________________________ Acknowledgements This project shows my academic achievements in the past three years. I am grateful to UMass tion. Jack Ahern, Ethan Carr, and my classmates and friends in the studio lead me to grow up aca- for the 3-year landscape architecture program, which gives me the opportunity to re-select my career. demically and spiritually. And I am very grateful to my parents for supporting me to study aboard and Thanks to those professors and classmates who helped me. teaching me a positive attitude towards life when I encounter difficulties. Thanks to my committee chair, Frank Sleegers. He is very humorous and patient, and his Without the kind help of these people, I have no way to make such a graduation work. I will design thinking is very active. Frank can always extract key information from complex situations continue to motivate myself, improve my professionalism, and generously share my knowledge and and teach me hand-to-hand and patiently answer my questions one after another, and push my design experience to others and encourage others. This is the best education that the LARP department has schedule forward, patiently remind me what to do next. Thanks to Michael DiPasquale for his knowl- given me. edge, good art taste and attention to detail. He can always explain the design from a way that can eas- ily understand and encourage students all the time. He let me know that designers should have empa- Yincheng Zhang thy, give the users the greatest understanding and solve problems for them. Thanks to Mark Hamin, a professor from regional planning. He is very knowledgeable and has strict logic and always gives me a clear design direction. He cares about his students and always tries his best to help us. In his class, I have a deeper and more accurate understanding of urban planning which let me think big of the design of smaller scale landscapes. Thanks to Theodore Eisenman, he assigned readings and theories to me to support my design and showed me how landscape design can reduce crime behavior. Thanks to my boyfriend Zhaohong Huang, a graduate architecture student at UMass. He patiently answered and taught me various softwares, enabling me to complete a better graphic presenta Abstract Table of Contents Like many metropolises around the world, urban renewal in New York dominates the process of urban development due to the scarcity of urban land resources and the ever-expanding population of New York. In the history of New York’s urban expansion, with the continuous expansion of the city’s outer edge and industrial relocation, industrial land originally on the edge of the city is gradually sur- I. Project Overview ------------------------------------------------ 1 IV. Site & Analysis ----------------------------------------------- 29 Introduction --------------------------------------------- 3 Site Context -------------------------------------------- 31 rounded by residential areas. Definition ------------------------------------------------ 5 History ------------------------------------------------- 33 Goals & Objectives -------------------------------------- 6 Demographic and Economic Trends ----------------- 34 The large area of vacant land and building also limits the further development of the region. Health and Air Pollution ------------------------------ 35 How to reuse the existing infrastructure and brownfield with the highly degraded environment is II. Research -------------------------------------------------------- 7 Existing Railroad Yard --------------------------------- 36 particularly important for urban regeneration. The physical development of Sunset Park, which began Literature Review --------------------------------------- 9 Existing Space Under Gowanus Expressway --------- 37 Methodology ------------------------------------------- 15 Opportunities, Constraints and Investment ---------- 38 over 100 years ago, was based on a different platform for manufacturing and distributing goods, one which was well-suited to the infrastructure and building types developed at the time. Today, the main III. Case Studies ------------------------------------------------- 17 V. Design Works ------------------------------------------------- 39 challenge is to figure out ways to adapt and reuse this antiquated industrial infrastructure and develop Brooklyn Bridge Park --------------------------------- 19 Phasing ------------------------------------------------- 41 Sunset Park into a 21st century model for diverse, dense and environmentally sustainable industry. Discovery Green --------------------------------------- 21 Complete Street ---------------------------------------- 47 High Line Park ---------------------------------------- 23 Proposed Railroad Yard Park -------------------------- 49 Gas Work Park ----------------------------------------- 25 Proposed Gowanus Underpass Park ------------------ 56 Through the transformation of two different types of brownfields at the Sunset Park waterfront Scioto Audubon Metro Park -------------------------- 27 area, this design proposal will promote the process of urban restoration and promote the sustainable VI. References ---------------------------------------------------- 61 development of existing brownfield. PROJECT OVERVIEW Figure 1. Aerial View of Bush Terminal. 1 Image by WXY Architecture + Urban Design 2 Introduction New York has a long history as a global industrial and manufacturing business center. However, in the rise in coastal areas, cleaning up brownfield is of great significance for marine health and regional areas ecologi- past decade, the city’s manufacturing employment rate has dropped sharply. cal restoration. Urban security is another social problem accompanied by economic recession. Sunset Park Community, located in Brooklyn, New York City, is an early industrial and residential com- Truck routes, sidewalks and vehicle routes bear many inherent points of conflict in this complex area. plex. As a result of industrial and technological upgrading, over the past decades, many factories have moved Additionally there is an overall lack of perceived and factual safety. These themes must be articulated and solved out of this area, large amount of funds have been evacuated, and the decline in employment opportunities and for an overall improvement of the area. population has slowed down the development of the area. (WXY architecture + urban design, 2016) This design proposal focus on two areas. The first area is located at the original railway yard. There it The waterfront of Sunset Park Community (from 1st Avenue to 3rd Avenue) was once a center of is proposed to design a series of coherent new urban parks and plazas to transform the area and create a new indus-trial activity. More than 10 blocks from the 3rd street (Gowanus Expressway) there are residential and destination for diverse populations close to the urban waterfront. The second focus is redesigning the landscape commercial land uses. In the past, most of the residents and workers here have been walking to the coastal underneath and adjacent to Gowanus Expressway. Today, these two areas create two major obstacles and safety industrial area to work, which has continued to this day. Community development began more than 100 years hazards to connect the residential areas in the southeast from 4th to 8th Avenue to the waterfront of Brooklyn’s ago, mainly for commodity manufacturing, warehousing and distribution, construction of a variety of Upper Bay. Based on the Sunset Park Waterfront Vision Plan and site visits, challenges, assets and constraints of infrastructure and different types of buildings. the site are listed. In the Sunset Park Brownfield Opportunity Area Study (BOA) Final Step 2 Report, published by WXY Architecture + Urban Design (2016), there are the prospects and goals of NYC for the future of the site. Today, the main challenge is how to adapt to and reuse

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