Gateway in Bookstores

oct 1, 2011

Columbia University, The Van Alen Institute and The National Parks Conservation have partnered to produce Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park.

click here to purchase the book @ Amazon.com

Gateway National Recreation Area is one of the most diverse and widely visited parks in the U.S. National Park System. Spreading across the coastline of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and New Jersey, it includes wildlife estuaries, bird-nesting areas, salt marshes, historic military forts, beaches, and New York City's first municipal airport, to name just a few of its exceptional features. It also contains sewage
treatment plants, sewer outfalls, landfills, and acres upon acres of toxic "black mayonnaise." Due to neglect and misuse, this extraordinary natural and national resource is at risk. Ninety percent of the salt marshes in Jamaica Bay-one of the most biologically productive habitats in the region-are at risk of disappearing in the next few years.

In 2007, Van Alen Institute, in collaboration with the National Parks Conservation Association and Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, opened the Envisioning Gateway design competition to investigate the extraordinary ecology of the park and re-envision a more sustainable future for it. Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park presents the results: bold and evocative visions that rethink not only Gateway but the role of urban nature in the twenty-first century. Featuring a photo essay by Laura McPhee, details of the prize-winning proposals and other entries, historical and critical essays, and vibrant satellite imagery, this book provides a blueprint for Gateway's future as an iconic national park. In turn, the visions in these pages show how research, design thinking, and a broad public process can inspire new modes of nature for an ever more urban world.