Rockaway’s Housing Superstorm: Between Rising Waters and Climate Gentrification

The course focuses on the design of a new public realm and the future of housing on New York City’s Rockaway Peninsula. For over a century, the Rockaways have been defined by displacement of residents from their homes, from eminent domain wielded by Robert Moses to the tidal surge of Superstorm Sandy. Displacement from the peninsula’s housing has also accelerated since 2012, due to homes damaged and destroyed during the storm, uneven support to repair and rebuild, and rising rents and real estate prices.

As relations between coastal waters and lands change through rising sea-levels, cloudbursts, and storm surges, life on the Rockaways will become increasingly challenged. The course recognizes that the peninsula will be inundated by 2100 and that inventive housing strategies of adaptation are needed, including repair, elevation, and even relocation. An expanded and resilient public realm will be essential to address decades of uneven development and to place community and climate justice at the heart of future designs.

In this two-part course, students will firstly research the histories and plans of New York City’s Rockaway Peninsula, relations between the public spaces, dynamic waterfronts, and housing challenges. They will use this knowledge during the course trip to work closely with residents to co-design a new public realm, connecting housing with community spaces, public beaches, coastal defenses, and metropolitan transport. In the second part, students will develop long-term strategies of repair, elevation, and relocation for the Rockaway Peninsula — working between the contexts of rising waters and climate gentrification while carefully responding to the aspirations and concerns of residents.

The beaches, parks, and public housing of the Rockaway Peninsula have a strong presence and long history. However, they have also been used in the past to divisively disconnect neighborhoods and residents. A new public realm across the Rockaways will become more important in the coming decades as housing is repaired, elevated, and relocated. It will provide a consistent ground of spaces, buildings, policies, and actions that put concerns for residents at the core of Rockaway’s future.

This interdisciplinary course will develop proposals that employ digital drawings, mappings, and modelling, as well as short written texts — working from the scale of public spaces, building massing, and coastal sections to regional topography and bathymetry. Projects will reflect on the initiatives of city and state agency programs, supported by FEMA. These include the NY Forward proposal to revitalize Far Rockaway with new urban developments elevated beyond the height of Sandy’s storm surge.

The course is generously supported by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and RISE (Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability and Equity). It also involves international guests and New York City designers and agencies (DEP, NYCHA, and DDC).

The course is open to students in all disciplines but a design background is strongly recommended.

Students enrolled in this course will travel to Rockaway Peninsula, NY.  The cost will be $100 (term-billed) plus meals and incidentals. Travel will take place September 30 – October 4.