Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

he describes the Big U project as a design "where the sustainable city is actually more enjoyable for human life than its alternative." Neighborhood groups were initially suspicious of BIG's attempts at inclusive planning processes. ey had experienced past post-disaster response planning processes, where officials "performed" inclusion yet in the end fulfilled elite agendas. As a result, communities that had become targets for recovery funds were "see- ing some of the most rapid gentrification in the city" (Greenberg 2017). Past inequitable redevelopment de- cisions were illustrated famously when the Goldman Sachs office tower, which had received flows of govern- ment financial support aer 9/11, was the only build- ing whose lights remained on aer Sandy. To agitate for an equitable city response, the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding (AJR) and LES Ready! emerged from com- munity labor coalitions that had built on generations of post disaster neighborhood organizing and ongoing resistance to gentrification, including along the East River waterfront itself (Greenberg 2017; Gotham and Greenberg, 2014, 158–161). As a result, community organizers insisted that inclusion in discussions about post-Sandy redevelopment would also involve inclu- sive project investment. e Rebuild by Design competition—initiated and carried out by the Obama Administration—was explicit in its efforts to be more transparent and more inclusive. e HUD call for proposals stated outright that planning processes needed to pay attention to "un- derserved populations." BIG planners realized that the Lower East Side was the perfect space in which to carry out this mandate. According to a study of the process, "it was social exclusion and the unlikelihood of private investment that created a case for prioritizing govern- ment intervention in the Lower East Side. According to BIG designer Jeremy Siegel, public officials felt that the LES was 'sort of a population and a building stock which …was particularly appropriate for public fund- ing given that there aren't a lot of development op- portunities'" (interview quoted in Collier, et al. 2016). And local activists, having experienced the significant neighborhood flooding and damage caused by Sandy, realized that their community not only needed to be defended against gentrifying developments but also needed to build a defense against subsequent storms. e BIG process seemed like the best bet to get the re- silience they needed without the gentrification of past redevelopment projects. "'Even though we fight devel- opers,' said LES Ready! co-chair and Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) Executive Director Damaris Reyes, '[Rebuild by Design] wasn't necessarily about housing. It wasn't so direct in terms of, "We're building luxury apartments,"…. [W]e felt that at the very least…the in- tentions were not to get rid of us'" (interview quoted in Collier et al. 2016). According to co-organizer Lilah Mejia, GOLES was initially hesitant, "because our community is being quickly gentrified, so any time you propose beautifying our lands, we think, 'Oh, you're trying to displace us'." Yet, the post-Sandy neighbor- hood coalitions, such as GOLES, AJR, and LES Ready!, agreed to participate in the BIG Rebuild by Design process. e Big U Design that won the HUD fund- ing, Mejia noted, represented "95 per cent of what we asked for" (interview quoted in Financial Times Re- port 2017). e plan agreed on between BIG designers and neighborhood groups involved building high park- land berms that redesigned the park's greenspaces to absorb floodwaters during stormsurges. According to Jeremy Siegel, who had directed the Big U project for BIG, participants overwhelmingly chose vulnerabili- ty-reducing berms that also increased neighborhood access to the water while protecting traditional neigh- borhoods, building a natural buffer that would absorb storm surges rather than high riverside floodwalls that would cut the neighborhoods off from the waterfront: "e concept that everybody could agree on was the idea of the bridging berm, a kind of rolling landscape in East River Park that then connects across the FDR highway providing better access to the neighborhoods beyond…It's always about working with these com- munities, understanding what works and what doesn't work" (interview quoted in Financial Times Special Report 2017). In other words, the community chose an option that was state-of-the art and which accepted the Ingels' idea that they deserved resilience, sustainabili- ty, and the "hedonic" and "fun" natural amenities the design offered. ey did not argue for a plan that was "just green enough" but instead argued for the full ben- efits the world-class design offered. Under assurances that this project was not just a real estate development plan in disguise, local groups participated in creating what became an award-winning design. Yet, from the beginning, it was clear that e Big U project, or any other of the resiliency and storm surge protection projects proposed to keep Lower Manhattan from going under water, would require a multi-billion-dollar investment, a difficult funding project for any municipality, even for one blessed with New York City's business and residential tax base. And this figure does not include the resiliency investments 50

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