JUSTIN BANDA

Our project site is located in Gowanus, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, which was established surrounding a 1.8 mile long canal which gave the area its name and empties into New York Harbor.

The Canal was used in the 20th century as an industrial transportation route and dumping ground, creating an ecological disaster that remains one of the U.S.’s most severely contaminated body of water. In 2010, the EPA declared the Canal a superfund site, and cleanup began just this past September. The community is concerned that developers will purchase decontaminated waterfront property to gentrify industrial areas for residential use.

A large portion of Gowanus exists within the IBZ, the Industrial Business Zone. Set up in 2006 in 16 NYC neighborhoods, the IBZ was established to protect manufacturing and industrial jobs citywide. Gowanus is surrounded by six other neighborhoods: Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and Greenwood/South Slope.

There are five MTA stops serving Gowanus, although only one, 9th/Smith, is actually part of the neighborhood. Two nearby western stops serve Carroll Gardens, and two eastern stops serve Park Slope. Gowanus is bounded by Smith Street in the west, 4th Avenue in the east, the I-278 Expressway to the south, and Baltic Street in the north.

Noted on the graphic to the right is the project area, which includes the extents of Gowanus and a small portion of Red Hook in the southwest. Note that the existing lots bordering the Canal were rezoned in the 1940s and 50s to break the residential fabric to make way for indsutry. After the industry’s exodus, the contaminated canal was left behind, creating vast swaths of non- or under-utilized lots.

On the left, you can see the existing zoning conditions within Gowanus, demonstrating New York’s current employment of use-based zoning, which has resulted in the heavily-segregated building types you can see on the right. A negative byproduct of use-based zoning is that it unnaturally mandates lots into specific types without consideration for the urban fabric.

Use-based zoning has led to the creation of the types shown here. Mandating use and floor- area ratios has led to the huge floor-plate buildings you can see in the IBZ. Gowanus predominantly consists of open-interior buildings, shown in purple, and various residential types, shown in blue. Magenta here represents institutional buildings such as schools and churches.

In 2013 the Gowanus community came together to form an organization called Bridging Gowanus, which outlined six community priorities for the neighborhood’s future which you can see here. These six priorities became the basis for an urban response in three areas: the residential narrative, the transit-oriented development narrative, and the IBZ narrative.

Development was phased in three parts. The pioneer phase begins seeding residential building types along bridge streets and within a quarter-mile from the 9th/Smith transit stop. The intermediate phase fills in the next-highest density of residential use, while the mature phase fills in final development and public plazas around the head, the crux, and in the lower IBZ.

The guiding element to our mature plan was to embrace the newly-cleaned canal by placing a series of nodes of public spaces and buildings, strung along the Canal in a continuous path. We employed a new form-based code, based on existing building types in Gowanus and neighboring areas, to guide development and infill while adhering to strict type definitions.

We implemented a form-based code to replace the use-based code currently applied to Gowanus. The plan calls for three transects: T5 Urban Center in light blue and purple, T6 Transit Oriented Development in navy, and a Special District in pink. The T5 contains three sub- transects: Main Street to connect commercial streets, Neighborhood Street to connect residential streets in and around Gowanus, and Flex for industrial streets outside of the IBZ.

Here we can see the effect that applying a form-based code has on Gowanus, both in terms of restoring the torn urban fabric and in terms of creating a comprehensive, sustainable walking path centered around six nodes along the canal. We attempted to incorporate all six of Bridging Gowanus’s goals throughout the plan, incorporating a beautiful riverwalk that jumps the canal in several locations.

The way we accomplish this is first and foremost by restoring the broken street grid in strategic locations, and by eliminating the dead-end streets currently scattered around the Canal. Repaired streets are highlighted in magenta on the right. We used 1886 and 1904 Sanborn maps to reconstruct historical routes, while compensating for changes in the canal path and highlighting access to the MTA stops.

The proposed urban plan results in significantly increased population density, with the exception of the IBZ, which continues by intent to have very low population density. The areas with the highest proposed density are around the market building and within a quarter mile of the renovated transit station. The six major nodes are outlined further.

At the Head of the Canal we created a celebratory water feature bounded by open plazas to commemorate the historic pump station, and to expand the park to better connect to the water. This area is the natural ending of a path of public space along the canal, with close proximity to the highest existing residential density of Gowanus in the public housing towers.

We introduced a neighborhood-scaled center of Gowanus focused around a neighborhood market surrounded by the densest area of commercial activity, paired with appropriate increases in residential density with the aim of creating a stronger sense of community. This area is the highest existing center of activity in the neighborhood, as it is intersected by half of the streets that bridge the Canal.

We introduced an arts-focused district near the crux, aiming to support the creative nature of the neighborhood while revitalizing a beloved, currently-abandoned power station, lovingly nicknamed “The Batcave” by residents. This area is marked by enclosed public plazas and high-density residential and retail along the waterfront. The 1st St basin is carved out to rectify canal overflow and flooding.

We revitalized a diminishing, predominantly-industrial sector of Gowanus by introducing residential and recreational activities within the industrial business zone, in the form of a public plaza that overlooks the crux of the Canal. This area begins the use-desegregation by seeding light industrial types with mixed-use public interest areas, while slowing shifting to higher density industrial southward to face the reconstructed IBZ.

We created a transit-oriented development in the biggest stretch of under- or non- utilized land in Gowanus that would support a redeveloped transit station, while aiming to meet the
desire for substantially-increased residential density within Gowanus, by mixing types that provide more affordable workplace housing. This node also contains a new library and school to support the residential load.

At the edge of Gowanus we developed the transit station at 9th/Smith to support the nearby transit-oriented development just north, while also developing the transit station itself as a high-end commercial center to draw business from Manhattan. The east edge of this area continues the reconstruction of the IBZ by seeding tower residential with high-density industrial, and the southern tip functions as a new campus for the Brooklyn-based Metro Tech university.

This project, “Gowanus: From Resilience to Sustainability," was awarded the Charter Award in the student category by the CNU-Illinois Board, and competed for the top prize at CNU-National.