Brooklyn Rust Belt

The field work and engagements have been conducted by 2019 Studio 05 Students: Charles Fang and Tommy Yang

Today, the city depends on one of its major transportation arteries, the highway infrastructures, for moving freight which causes traffic congestion. Instead, the new speculation will balance the needs for trucks by utilizing the existing rail infrastructure. In 2019, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) released a comprehensive urban plan, measuring the revitalization of the Brooklyn Freight connecting the Sunset Park Piers to the Bronx for moving natural resources, objects, and products. The strategic freight infrastructure investments aims to "create thousands of good jobs, all while preparing the city for a growing and changing economy."

This analysis, coined Brooklyn's Rust Belt, illustrate the freight as an organism of its own, with other potential properties other than moving freight. The infrastructure historically has was an artery dividing communities, penetrating the land to floating over streets, yet due to the abandonment has become an intersection of many systems. Today, the rail line is a transect of ecologies utilized by warehouses, trucks, buses, homeless people, beasts, and the forgotten plants of New York. It is a commons for things and people, not to mention the lingering signage to keep out.

The Rust Belt Model

Student Designers include : Rifah Khan, Gabi Korac, Irshaad Malloy, Melissa Sotelo, Tommy Yang, Walter Pont

Within blocks of the rail, the neighborhoods are zoned as light manufacturing, filled with heavy spanning warehouses moving products such as Coca Cola, Wood, and more. Trucks moving in and out of the mouths of these large boxes. The rail infrastructure moving once an hour, slowly reminiscing the historical past of the freight. How does this rail become a way to connect the different neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens?

This inspired a series of thematic reclamation projects, introducing new themes of production and public space to key points of the site. These prospective designs, students individually and collectively, drew existing program from the Freight Belt to remake new futures. The belt no longer is a division within their worlds but a connection of commons for people, objects, beasts, plants and the natural elements. A new public for Brooklyn and Queens.