Blog

Flooding, Infrastructure Maintenance, and the Future of New York City

This project by Marooha, Alanis, and Michelle, examines how aging drainage infrastructure, climate change, and uneven maintenance practices contribute to flooding across New York City. Using the Gowanus Canal as a case study, students explored the intersections of environmental justice, public infrastructure, and neighborhood vulnerability through field observations, research, and class discussions. The presentation highlights how working-class and immigrant communities in South Brooklyn are disproportionately affected by flooding and considers both community-based and policy-driven solutions for creating a more resilient and equitable urban future.

New York’s Wetlands: What Does the Diamondback Terrapin’s Decline Reveal?

This presentation explores the diamondback terrapin as an indicator species for the health of New York City’s wetlands. Through research on habitat loss, sea-level rise, pollution, and conservation efforts, Sasha, Rebecca, Octavia, and Mari examine how the decline of terrapins reflects broader environmental challenges facing coastal ecosystems and why protecting wetlands is essential for biodiversity, flood mitigation, and the future resilience of New York City.

The Future of Climate-Resilient Parks Beyond Battery Park City: Wagner Park as a Model for All?

For their final project, Badriah, Audrey, Anthony, and Mohammad examined Wagner Park in Battery Park City as a case study in climate resilience and urban adaptation. Through historical research, field observations, and comparative analysis with other flood-prone areas such as the Gowanus Canal, the group explored how innovative park design, flood mitigation infrastructure, ecological restoration, and public investment can help New York City prepare for rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms. Their project considers how lessons from Wagner Park’s transformation might inform future resilience efforts across the city’s waterfront communities.

This course takes New York City’s beaches, wetlands, marshes, canals, and waterfronts as critical sites for understanding the city’s future as an island shaped by water, climate, and unequal forms of care. While students may begin with familiar spaces, the course encourages them to rethink urban nature as infrastructure, political terrain, and a measure of what and who the city is designed to protect. Through close observation of sites such as Brooklyn Bridge Park, Gowanus Canal, Marine Park Salt Marsh, Brighton Beach, Battery Park City, and a few other nature areas that are accessible by public transit, students will examine how land, water, and human design interact at the city’s edges.

Students are asked to consider how wetlands, bays, and restored landscapes function simultaneously as ecological systems, climate defenses, and contested public spaces, revealing deep power dynamics around access, risk, and livability. We will explore how some environments are carefully engineered and maintained, while others are neglected or rendered invisible, and what these choices suggest about race, class, labor, and environmental justice in New York City. By treating observation as a form of inquiry, students will develop research questions grounded in field work and archival study.

This seminar emphasizes primary, place-based research, including field observation, mapping, archival study, and engagement with planning documents and community histories. Students will synthesize ecological, historical, and social perspectives to ask what makes a city capable of sustaining life over time and what must change for New York City to remain livable in an era of climate uncertainty. Students are asked to imagine futures for New York City that begin at its edge landscapes, a semester-long study of New York City through water.

Final Projects

Edgewater Landscapes and the Future of NYC is a digital platform featuring MHC Seminar 4 Spring 2026 student research, fieldwork, ecological observation, mapping projects, interviews, and multimedia storytelling developed through the course Seminar 4: Futures of New York City. Focusing on sites including Marine Park, the Gowanus Canal, and Wagner Park in Battery Park City, students explored how climate change, coastal infrastructure, environmental justice, and urban redevelopment are reshaping New York City’s waterfronts.

Here are student projects from this semester: