NYC Requests Bold Ideas and Creative Solutions for Resilient Waterfront Development

06.04.13

To engage best practices and innovative thinking from around the world, the city has invited designers and urban planners to submit plans for an 80-acre site in Far Rockaway, Queens. The FAR ROC [For a Resilient Rockaway] competition entries will provide inventive solutions to be applied directly in the Rockaways, as well as new ideas for other at-risk waterfront neighborhoods throughout the city.

Hurricane Sandy demonstrated the need for new ideas about development along NYC’s vulnerable coastline. The damage to buildings, beaches, and utility systems on the Rockaway Peninsula calls for a difficult discussion as to whether certain areas should be “rebuilt, maintained and defended, or simply abandoned.” Challenges posed by climate change, sea level rise, and increasingly frequent major storm events cannot be resolved by designers and planners alone, but new development strategies, like the ones to be tested in the Rockaways, can provide a laboratory to solicit the most innovative ideas. Submissions are required to consider the environmental and physical challenges of the at-risk site as well as the economic development, housing, and infrastructure needs of the area.

The Phase I submission deadline is June 14, 2013. The competition is organized by city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, L+M Development Partners, the Bluestone Organization, Enterprise Community Partners, Triangle Equities, and the AIA NY.

Tags: climate change, competition, resiliency, Rockaways