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Field Operations completes North Park transformation at Freshkills Park, once world's largest landfill

2023-10-17T17:24:00-04:00

Field Operations has shared photos of their completed work on the first phase of North Park at the Freshkills Park redevelopment project for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Over the course of 30 years, what was once the world’s largest landfill will become an interconnected series of parks and open spaces spread across 750 acres on the west side of Staten Island, beginning with the newly inaugurated 21-acre segment. A pathway carved into a gently curving earthwork arc guides visitors from a new entry approach around the base of the northernmost landfill mounds, culminating in an overlook that offers views of the Main Creek wetlands and William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. Costs for the project have been reported at $21 million.

Image: NYC Parks/Malcolm Pinckney

Visitors entering from Wild Avenue will encounter an arrangement of flowering ground swales leading northeast to a sumac-lined plateau and picnic lawn. There, a bird tower set against the water’s edge dominate...

Is your city running out of space? Hong Kong says: Just build more land

2019-07-25T07:23:00-04:00

Under the ambitious “Lantau Tomorrow” plan, Hong Kong will first build a roughly 2,500-acre island—roughly the size of 1,000 football fields—around the uninhabited Kau Yi Chau Island to the northeast of Lantau. This may be followed by an additional 1,700 additional acres of land reclamation around the island Hei Ling Chau, which is roughly two miles from Mui Wo and visible from its shoreline.

CityLab reports that under a new aggressive urban growth plan, Hong Kong will create a pair of new islands totaling over 3,200 acres in area in order to create new high-density urban neighborhoods.

Record-breaking affordability issues on the island have pushed wait times for public housing passed the half-decade mark, while by certain estimates, CityLab reports, the average Hong Konger must wait 25 years to be able to afford to purchase an apartment in what is currently the world's most expensive real estate market.

Under the Lantau Tomorrow plan, CityLab reports, the city could provide between 150,000 and 260,000 new housing units with up to 70-percent of those homes earmarked as public housing.

Manhattan's Battery Park was once a surreal beachfront

2019-06-23T10:45:00-04:00

Technically, the sand wasn’t intended for public use. But Manhattan is not your usual island, and beaches are whatever Manhattanites say they are: sidewalks, tar-paper roofs, the hoods of cars or, in this case, acres and acres of landfill.

Though Manhattan skyline has been the focus of countless photographs, movies and television shows, there are still images out there that can defy expectations. For a brief period, between the late 1960's and the 1980's, the lower West end of Manhattan (known as Battery Park City) was an "ersatz beach," the consequence of a failed makeover planned by New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller which, according to the New York Times, "was so exuberant that it could only fail."

A sculpture by Nancy Rubins made from found objects in Battery Park City, Aug. 1, 1980. Photo by Fred R. Conrad.

Officially known as "the Battery Park City landfill," the unplanned beach front provided a surreal stage for many of New York's diverse set of classes, including artists and college students. Sculptor Nancy Rubins, for instance, collected waste and compiled it into what eventually became a 15 foot structure (above).

Battery Park City, Aug. 18, 1981. Photo by Sara Krulwich

By the mid 1980s, a masterplan was...

Transforming a garbage heap into a public park

2015-07-02T17:37:00-04:00

Since the capping and closure of Fresh Kills’ five mounds, this 2,200-acre expanse of wetlands, marshlands, dry lowlands, forests, and grasslands has evolved into an unusual combination of natural and engineered beauty.

Originally a patch of creeks and marshland on the western shore of Staten Island, the area now known as Fresh Kills became a major landfill for New York City in 1948, once Robert Moses bought the land for housing development. His plan was to solidify the marshland with waste for a few years, and then build. But construction never happened, and for the remainder of the 20th century, the area served as a 2,200-acre garbage heap (by comparison, Central Park covers 843 acres). People hated it, and in 2001 managed to get the city to close it down, and begin the process of transforming it back into its (more or less) former ecological state, to be used as a public park known as Freshkills.

Learn more about Freshkills' storied past: