During the last decade, the development of Battery Park City has received extensive media coverage. The 1979 master plan was designed to reproduce, on 92 acres of landfill, the look and feel of established New York City neighborhoods and to reorient a piece of the city to the waterfront. Its vision revived faith in public-sponsored projects. Emphasis on the street and the square marked a return to traditional urbanism. Collaborations between landscape architects, artists and architects were mandated. Much of the media coverage, however, has focused on plans or openings of new construction and little coverage has been critical. One exception is Abby Bussel who, in a May 1994 issue of P/A, concluded: "I am enticed by its parks and open spaces, but appalled by its bland architecture, lifeless streets, and 'Old New York' artificial flavoring."

Is this an accurate conclusion? Does BPC's strength lie in its esplanade and parks? How much of this strength is inherited from the structure of the master plan and how much is derived from the design of each of the sites? Were landscape architects impeded by the process?

With the newly opened Wagner Park at its southernmost tip, the parks and gardens of Battery Park City are now fully in place and attracting concentrated use. In an attempt to see what we have learned from the development of BPC, its collaborations and master plan, as well as the design quality of specific sites, Land Forum has asked for Rants and Raves:

Clogged Arteries

The premise of Battery Park City is to replicate the best of traditional New York City urbanism. It is, however, a narrow reading of urbanism, with modernism conveniently edited out. This new urbanism, while successful in many ways, is compromised by its limited historicist repertoire and thematic approach. What is left out of the recipe of Battery Park City are those un-themeable qualities that really matter: diversity, chance situations, unexpected juxtapositions and the stylistic clash that occurs with growth and change over time.

Of course there are many good and notable parts of the project, including Paul Friedberg's simple fountains and pleached Platanus groves, Mary Miss's viewing pavilion and cove, and R.M. Fischer's quirky gate. And Laurie Olin's waterside esplanade is a wonderful addition to the city. However, on the whole, I feel that there is just too much of the "themed thing" and not enough of the real thing. An apt analogy might be eating a large and many-coursed meal consisting of only rich foods. When I visit Battery Park City I can feel my arteries clogging up with too much hex-block, granite and historicist lamp posts. It makes me long for the simplicity of the sorbet course, with perhaps a little steel and glass, perhaps some modernism.

Battery Park City has yet some remarkable opportunities to liven up its urban mix. Future projects include design of the Marginal Street Park and additions to both south and north residential neighborhoods. Less reliance on narrow historical theming and more on fostering fresh contemporary design work would move the place closer to real urbanism.

Ken Smith is a New York City-based landscape architect and educator, who has worked on a wide variety and scale of projects, including a recent master planning and design study for Marginal Street Park.

Virtuous Space

The open spaces commissioned by the Battery Park City Authority set a new standard in New York for integrating public art and open space. But what is missing from the official public spaces is very simple: space. When the BPCA was soliciting proposals for South/Wagner Park, my partner at the time, Judith Heintz, and I visited the site with the architect Paul Rudolph, to see if we could submit as a team. We stood looking around us at all that space, and concluded that you needed only to give the site adequate space, or scale, to allow people to experience the connections between the city, the water, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the rolling hills of Staten Island, and the lowlands of the New Jersey shoreline. Mr. Rudolph felt that the selection committee would never get it, this idea of space, without a lot of stuff, or product, and we all went home. The new park, lovely as it is, is filled to the brim; every legitimized space at Battery Park City focuses in on its contents, rather than simply opening out. The spaces that Judith Heintz and I designed for the north neighborhood — the vacant lot meadows, the recreation park — are only interim uses, and although we are aware of the resulting improvement in the quality of life for the surrounding neighborhoods, these spaces will eventually be replaced by buildings. People are edified not only by encountering unique and clearly designed landscapes, but also by being able to run and play games outdoors; by taking in the breadth and scale of one of the most magnificent public spaces in New York City, New York Harbor; by being in a space that, by virtue of a certain emptiness, allows them just to be. This kind of space is hard to design, harder to construct, and hardest to sell.

Margie Ruddick works in Philadelphia and New York, and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. Her current work, including an urban waterfront park in Sichuan and a family compound in Santa Fe, deals with issues of water recycling and conservation.

Endangered Ballfields

For parents, one amenity above all others fulfills Battery Park City's promise as a high-toned city suburb. It is roughly four acres of meticulously groomed green space where pint-sized baseball and soccer players compete in the shadow (literally) of the World Financial Center and the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The action may not be riveting, but the vista is majestic in anyone's league.

Kids and parents from Battery Park City and the adjacent neighborhood of Tribeca call this precious piece of Manhattan real estate "the ballfields." Battery Park City calls it "Sites 25 and 26."

For years, Battery Park City's governing agency, the Battery Park City Authority, insisted that the ballfields were "interim" and that one day they would be plowed under to make way for residential high rises. Community leaders and local politicians vowed they would place themselves in front of bulldozers before allowing the destruction of lower Manhattan's only playing fields.

Last year, the new president of the Battery Park City Authority, John LaMura, promised that the fields would remain, though perhaps in some altered shape and size.

Those development sites, say the Authority, have a value of $100 million and the revenue has to be made up somehow. To do that, LaMura suggests a modification to Battery Park City's master plan and an amendment to its zoning to allow for bigger buildings on the surrounding sites. An Authority-commissioned study, which was due to be released four months before this writing, is expected to show what the plan should look like. In the meantime, parents are relieved that Little League baseball and soccer no longer seem endangered, but some wonder what lies ahead for the ballfields when the surrounding sites are developed.

"Are we looking at the possibility of creating such a great valley that we won't have any sun or there will be wind tunnels?" asks Madelyn Wils, a parent who has been active in lobbying and planning for play space in Battery Park City. "I've been around too long to think that this is going to come without a price."

Carl Glassman is the editor of The Tribeca Trib, a newspaper covering the Manhattan neighborhoods of Battery Park City and Tribeca.

South Cove

In 1985, South Cove offered an unprecedented opportunity for the landscape architect to exercise full freedom of creativity to come to the design table collaboratively with artist and architect, to explore concepts without preconceptions or limits for the design of an artificial barren site and with the full backing of the client who had the resources to make the project happen. The Battery Park City Authority was committed to the premise that the value of its 92-acre landfill development would depend primarily on the quality of its built environment, particularly of its waterfront parks.

Battery Park City provides continuous access to the water. A 1.5 mile esplanade along the western shore of lower Manhattan connects a series of individual parks. The park system is integrated into the fabric of the development which in turn is laid out in continuum of the adjacent city street grid.

The excitement and vitality of the parks lie in the variety of conceptual approaches to the design of the water's edge. "Edges" are the dynamic places in both nature and the city where activity and change most frequently occur, ecosystems and plant communities converge, urban cultures collide, and the built environment confronts the natural world.

South Cove is a representation of "nature" — a generic "natural" cove which evokes early natural coastal conditions and riverfront structures. A dense layering of water edge elements — rocks, beach grasses, long groves of trees and sweeps of Rosa rugosa — meld with wooden pyles, jetty and pergola to create an intimate cove and the intense experience of the river's edge.

Together, these parks — the pastoral lawns of Rockefeller (Hudson River) Park, the bosquet and pylons of Belvedere Park (North Cove Link), the "naturalistic" edge of South Cove, and the focused view of Wagner Park across the water to the Statue of Liberty — form a dramatic narrative of Manhattan's waterfront and draw the public irresistibly to its edge.

Susan Child, Principal of Child Associates, Inc. Landscape Architecture has collaborated on the design of two parks at Battery Park City: South Cove (1985-1989) with artist Mary Miss and architect Stan Eckstut, and Belvedere Park (1989-1997) with Steve Goldberg of Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and Martin Puryear, artist.

Entry Benches

The flower garden in Wagner Park, so completely unintegrated into the overall park design, seems like an afterthought. It is unconnected to the riverside esplanade or the grassy areas that border it. The garden is hidden from view by an uninteresting 5 foot privet hedge (although this barrier is probably what allows the plants to survive; the wind that comes off the river can be fierce!)

Five wooden benches form a semi-circle around the garden. Although the flowers, in four raised rectangular boxes, are only several feet from each bench, the garden fails to please because once the eye looks beyond the flowers, the view is unattractive. Two of the benches face the sidewalk, street and an undeveloped lot. Another bench faces the back of the snack bar. Only from one of the benches can one see beyond the hedges to the river and to one's right, where the stepped roof of the Museum of Jewish Heritage is dramatically framed against the sky.

Recently, on two beautiful weekend days, the rest of the park was filled with people while the garden's benches remained empty for long periods of time. Visitors to Wagner Park are drawn to the river and esplanade. It was a mistake to design a garden that turns its back on them.

April Koral is co-publisher of The Tribeca Trib, the community newspaper covering Tribeca and Battery Park City.