I don't want to (over)romanticize gritty manufacturing blight, but the last thing they should do with Red Hook is turn it into another Battery Park City.

My in-laws just moved to BPC, and it is a sterile, empty, boring, cobble stoney ghost town.

An "urban village" doesn't work without transit, and this area is a mile from the train. This plan is doomed.

Perhaps the idea of the Red Hook trolley should be revived.
I've noticed that the oft-discussed plans to connect Brooklyn's waterfront via parks and trolleys goes from Brooklyn Heights along the water, and stops just short of Red Hook. Heaven forbid the Red Hookers should have easy access to Brooklyn Heights.
I live near (but not in) Red Hook and love its 'lost in time' quality by the water, but this is NY, and any waterfront property has tremendous potential value. Where there is possible money to be made, people will try to make it. Isn't it better to have the Red Hook waterfront be developed (and it will, like it or not) in a way that at least CONSIDERS the longtime area residents?

Oy. As is usual with planning of this nature, not everybody will be happy. As a Red Hook resident, who spent a year speaking to residents across the spectrum on this local issue as well as others, I can say that it is unlikely that common ground will be found except through local planning. If outside groups keep coming in and saying what is best for the community and then trying to form alliances with particular groups (based on class, race, etc), there will be a fractured community.

I know that there is no one community and that there is little communication between the many sub-communities that exist. But Ikea is definitly not going to pull them together towards a common goal.

I prefer an idea of smaller developments that use pre-existing architecture and promote smaller businesses started by community residents. I don't know why progress has to always be so huge.

Since the commute is so difficult, the people who come in will be drivers except during the summer months, when bikers and urban walkers will make it over. So a development more in keeping with the natural scale of the area would make more sense. Also there could be a push for the types of businesses that locals would want, such as decent daycare,fishing bait shop, hardwood store . A micro-economy.

Um, planning didn't start in the 1950s, planning "started" in China around 2500BC - trust me on that one. Western city planning really took hold with Ebenezer Howard's Garden City (in England) and under Napoleon III (and Haussmann) in Paris. Zoning started in Los Angeles in the beginning of the 20th century, and was quickly adopted in New York City, later across the country by federal mandate (except in Houston, TX). I think what you're referring to is Robert Moses-style urban renewal, which gathered steam during the 50s.

Anyway. Something to note (this is a truth central to questionable suburban development patterns): an IKEA brings jobs but no associated school costs and lighter infrastructure / public services requirements. Residential development, in general, costs more in public services than it adds in property tax base. In addition, it's the current residents that typically foot the svcs bill for new residents.

Just my fifteen or twenty cents.

Yeah, by "planning" I clearly meant the vein of "strategic planning" that comes out of industrial design processes and bled into every sector of public life, beginning mostly in the 1950s (at least in the US). Zoning is different than Planning, and it's a really important distinction. Zoning creates rules of engagement, practices that are fair and allow a range of diverse, but all acceptible, outcomes.

Planning, in the "master planning" sense is almost inevitably a disaster. While planning is happening, development is on hold. What gets enacted from, say, a 5-year plan usually happens in the first 18 months. Which means that the work is incomplete. Without a plan, any community could dedicate 18 months to putting good ideas into practice. Whatever they accomplished wouldn't be an incomplete part of a more comprehensive master plan. It would just be 18 months of putting good ideas into practice.

We can put good ideas into action without trying to create a comprehensive plan. This is as true for urban plans as it is for organizations' strategic plans. I highly recommend David LaPiana's "Strategy Formation: Beyond Strategic Planning" at www.lapiana.org, as well as "The Campaign Approach to Change" from the Center for Applied Research at www.cfar.com.

I'm not sure I can agree that the failings of firm-oriented strategic planning and urban planning can so easily be compared. If zoning is useful, as you say it is - and I agree - zoning is only the manifestation of a community's perception of where it is and where it wants to be; in essence, its plan. While a great many plans created unfavorable externalities, the "free market" ideal creates equally abysmal situations.

Planning, to me, is a means of tangibly determining the present status of a given conurbation, and the potential alternative future growth and development patterns. This, in turn, can be presented to the stakeholders in order to organize a coherent, cohesive, and equitable collective action. That's participatory planning, not necessarily rational planning. Rational planning - of the type Moses employed for much of his career - relies solely on the planner as professional, and removes the potential irrationality of constituents. That's not what I advocate.

In short: there is always a level of planning occurring in a particular city / suburb / community; even if it is not explicit. Participatory planning is a means of organizing individual needs and desires into just development plans. And as such, should never be written off.

i think building a three mile park along the water front would be an awesome idea. battery park is beautiful all of new yorks waterfront nieghborhoods should have that.