CIVIL SOCIETY STRATEGIES ON URBAN WATERWAYS: Stewardship, Contention, and Coalition Building by Lindsay Kathleen Campbell A.B., Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs (2002) Princeton University Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology June 2006 © Lindsay Campbell All rights reserved Signature of Author………………………………………………………………………………… Department of Urban Studies and Planning May 23, 2006 Certified by………………………………………………………………………………………… JoAnn Carmin, Professor Department of Urban Studies and Planning Thesis Supervisor Accepted by……………………………………………………………………………………… Langley Keyes, Ford Professor Department of Urban Studies and Planning Chair, MCP Committee ABSTRACT Urban, industrial waterways—with their contamination, environmental injustice, and nebulous development futures given changing economies—present multiple problems that are confronted by environmental civil society organizations. Despite the many problems, these groups view urban waterways as some of the last available open space in the city and as potential public amenities and natural resources that merit revitalization. This work focuses on the means by which citizen groups and nonprofit organizations—which are often in positions of relatively less power and authority vis-à-vis public and private actors—attempt to engage, be heard, and leverage influence over decision-making on and end use of three New York City river resources. Depending on the situation and the groups involved, strategies rooted in conflict or collaboration rise to the fore. Civil society organizations select from “insider” strategies based on cooperation with government, “outsider” strategies that depend upon advocacy and pressure tactics directed towards either government or the private sector, and “independent” strategies like stewardship, education, and environmental monitoring that engage with the resource, regardless of the political and policy context. To understand the selection and efficacy of strategies in general and alliance-building in specific, this thesis examines the following questions: 1) how do internal and external factors shape the strategies that civil society actors select as they seek to engage in the protection of urban industrial waterways?; 2) to what extent and for what reasons are civil society actors pursuing collaboration and coalition building as a preferred strategy? and 3) what environmental and social outcomes are achieved as a consequence of different strategic approaches? To address these questions I conducted case studies of the Bronx River, the Newtown Creek, and the Gowanus Canal. As a comparative study, this thesis reveals that the complex challenges of restoration in the urban environment require equally complex solutions. There is no one single, prescriptive approach that will yield more successful environmental and social outcomes. Strategies are products of resource constraints, political opportunities, community contexts, and deeply embedded group ideologies. While groups have a dominant strategy, they can shift and evolve over time in response to different triggers. For all of the benefits of this pluralism, cooperation is the strategy that can serve to bring the most resources to bear for long term planning and revitalization. Coalition building requires divergent ideologies to be aligned and find common ground, and it is a deliberate process that requires entrepreneurial leadership by both citizens and public servants. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, thank you to all of my interviewees who took the time to speak with me and to share their stories and the stories of the organizations that they support. The waterways of New York City would be very different without these individuals and groups; and I am inspired and humbled by their commitment. They are just a small slice of the thousands of dedicated citizens who integrate stewardship, protection, care, and improvement of the urban environment into their everyday and professional lives. I’d also like to thank my advisor JoAnn Carmin for her guidance throughout the entire thesis writing process. From coursework, to proposal writing, to drafts and revisions, she provided me with critical mentoring and support. Thanks also to my reader Anne Spirn for her feedback towards the end and to Judith Tendler for her thoughts at the beginning stages during thesis preparation coursework. I am grateful to the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative, Larry Susskind, and Herman Karl for seeing the relevance of civil society behavior and the urban ecosystem to issues of collaborative environmental decision making. Just as this program has expanded my area of interest, so too do I hope my thesis can make a contribution to their field. Thanks also to my employer, the USDA Forest Service Northeastern Research station, Mark Twery, and Erika Svendsen, for allowing me to pursue my field work in New York City during the summer of 2005. Being given the time and capacity to truly ground this thesis in the field was vital. In turn, I expect that I can bring the lessons I’ve learned back to practice. Finally, much gratitude goes to my roommate, friends, and family, who were with me each step of the way. They provided everything from proofreading to moral support to welcome distraction and I could not have done this without them. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Acronyms 5 Chapter 1: Introduction 7 Chapter 2: Bronx River: a top-down and bottom-up coalition 35 Chapter 3: Newtown Creek: a maverick advocacy group shifts towards collaboration 59 Chapter 4: Gowanus Canal: stewardship and community development through 81 independent action Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusion 107 Appendix 1: Diagram and Chart 129 Appendix 2: Maps 131 Appendix 3: Chronologies 141 Appendix 4: Organizational Charts 153 Works Cited 157 LIST OF ACRONYMS BCUE Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment BOA Brownfield Opportunity Area BRA Bronx River Alliance CDC community development corporation COE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers CSO civil society organization DEC New York State Department of Environmental Conservation DEP New York City Department of Environmental Protection DOT New York State Department of Transportation EDC New York City Economic Development Corporation EIS environmental impact statement EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency FROGG Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus GCCDC Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation GMDC Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center GWAPP Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning (formerly Greenpoint Williamsburg Against the Power Plant) MWA Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance NCA Newtown Creek Alliance NCMC Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee NIMBY Not In My Back Yard NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NPS National Park Service PICCED Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development SSB Sustainable South Bronx SMO social movement organization URP Urban Resources Partnership YMPJ Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice 5 6 I. INTRODUCTION Changes in the global and local economies have led to the retrenchment of water- dependent industry on many urban waterways. Urban areas in the Northeastern United States that were dependent on rivers as their economic lifeblood in the industrial era must reconsider their functions in the post-industrial age. At one time, these waterways played host to diverse industries from chemical manufacturing to oil and gas processing, to smelting—uses which are now rarely found within urban centers (Merchants Association of New York Industrial Bureau [MANY], 1921). New York City was dependent on shipping and water-based transportation until the second half of the 20th century when many of the major bridge, tunnel, and highway projects were completed, trucking became more popular than shipping, and the freight forwarding industry relocated from Brooklyn to New Jersey. In particular, highway infrastructure that was created in the 1950s and 1960s, including the Cross Bronx Expressway (completed in 1963), the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island (completed in 1964), and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (completed in 1964) had a major effect on shipping-based industries (Eastern Roads, 2006). It made many firms located on the Gowanus Canal, Newtown Creek and Bronx River less dependent on water-based transport and encouraged them either to switch to using highway based trucking or simply to relocate out of New York City (Dolkart, 1989). The decline of industry was hastened by high real estate, insurance, and labor costs in New York City. Issues of space constraint, real estate uncertainty, and high costs—particularly for liability insurance, employee health benefits, real estate, and utilities—continue to be main concerns of the city’s industrial sector today (NYC Office of the Mayor, 2005). Over 100 years of industrial activity, along with the existence of a combined sewer system that outfalls directly into rivers if the system is overtaxed during a heavy rain, has created myriad environmental problems for New York City waterways and the humans that live near them. Oil and heavy metal-contaminated water and silt, along with low dissolved oxygen content, eutrophication, and low visibility are common conditions that impair plant and animal life. Similarly, waterfront industrial properties have all the problems of real or perceived brownfields contamination.