SCAPE / Landscape Architecture
New York

Jamaica Bay is one of the nation’s most urbanized estuaries -a low coastal elevation zone with a high, vulnerable population density. It is largely part of the National Park system and serves as critical wildlife habitat & breeding grounds for hundreds of species of fish and birds. Its formerly shallow marine bathymetry has been drastically altered by deep dredging and the ongoing effects of nitrification from waste water treatment plants. This has threatened its value as precious intertidal marine habitat, and moreover has made residents and transport infrastructure in its environs more exposed to wave action & flooding, both of which will exacerbate the steady threat of a rising sea. More than any other zone, Jamaica Bay signifies how we can shift our approach to resiliency, and offers a site with rich potential to test a range of different strategies depicted here both onshore and within the bay’s disappearing marshes and shoals. Jamaica Bay will be home to a signature new Resiliency Institute, where we can contribute to ongoing research efforts and green/blue infrastructure upgrades – aligning habitat regeneration goals and coastal protection co-benefits.

Download the boards presented by SCAPE /Landscape Architecture in 2013.