Carteret, a story of severance: accessible waterfront development in the Anthropocene
Creators: name: Magnanini, William A.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2023

description: New Jersey is a state that is rich in waterways that once made up the backbone of its identity. However, New Jersey’s industrialization and role in providing housing and infrastructure for New York City has led to the desecration of many of its most valuable rivers and limited their accessibility. The overdevelopment of riparian zones, bulkheading of shorelines and hiding streams within pipes has shifted the cultural understanding of rivers from “life givers” to “life takers”. Heavy industrialization of the North Jersey coastline has further removed people from their waterways and limited the understanding of their potential. Combine this with the privatization of many shorelines along New Jersey’s waterways and you get a complete disconnect between the general populous and their riverscapes. The effects of human society on global processes born out of the Anthropocene has exacerbated this disconnect and serviced the narrative that waterways are extremely dangerous to life, business, and property. New Jersey’s waterfront development, the Anthropocene and general planning and design ideologies which sit at the core of this thesis will be discussed in Chapter 1. An opportunity is presented by the interpretation of the Anthropocene’s observed effects as a call to action. There is potential to reconnect people to the landscape (in this case to the riverscape) through resilient redevelopment. This type of redevelopment is particularly applicable to urban areas, waterfront locales and contaminated post-industrial sites. The North Jersey coast is brimming with contaminated sites that have been remediated or are undergoing remediation and need to be redesigned and integrated into the existing urban context. Much of North Jersey is also undergoing a transformation from a primarily suburban structure to an urban structure. Facing urbanization, there is potential for losing community identity, or the possibility of forming a new identity. The Borough of Carteret, located on the shores of the Arthur Kill, faces all these challenges and its shoreline has been identified as a primary focus for resilient redevelopment by those in the field. The Arthur Kill Watershed Management Area will be explored at the regional scale through history and breakthrough research regarding resilient redevelopment in Chapter 2. Carteret’s industrial legacy and its recently remediated “Dupont Site” provide the perfect opportunity to expand waterfront access to its residents (Chapter 3 and 4). In addition, the creation of Fresh Kills Park across the Arthur Kill would allow the Dupont Site to mesh into a regional green network. While proposals currently exist for the site, I will provide a design for an interactive waterfront park that could change the perception of the Arthur Kill to those in Carteret. The design will focus on combining a residential development with a public waterfront park to break down the boundary between private and public space. The site design will focus on facilitating community, building identity, providing accessibility, and combatting trends of social isolation and distrust for others. The form finding process will be laid out in detail in Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 will focus on the site programming and pull on a plethora of European precedents.