Scenic view

The view of Manhattan from my old stomping grounds in Brooklyn's Northside. Despite massive development pressures for this old warehouse district, the state is preserving about 2.5 acres to turn into parkland. All around this park, there will probably be about 20,000 or so apartment units constructed over the next 5 years. There's already a 42 story tower nearing completion just to the south (left of where i was standing when i shot this panorama) and a 5 story condo directly behind me to the east. I should add that NYC deals with urban infill development like this in several ways that are different from Durham. Most significant, is that developers get concessions from the city regarding building height and number of units if they agree to keep a certain percentage of their units "affordable," defined by some percentage of the median market price for similar apartments. Also, there's no minimum number of parking spaces that developers must provide. Actually, i'm pretty sure there's a maximum number of spaces per bedroom that developers are allowed to include in projects like this. Of course, this is, to my knowledge, the largest remaining parcel of land available for development in either Brooklyn or Manhattan, and certainly the last one on the waterfront.

The waterfront was once a train shipping facility, where loaded rail cars from Long Island would get spun on a roundhouse and loaded onto barges to be shipped around the Battery to New Jersey and from there to the rest of the country, back in the early 20th century. When i lived there in the 80s, the barges were still tied up to their docks, and the outlines of the roundhouse were still visible if you knew where to stand and look.

Click on the photo for a larger image.