Brooklyn Promenade Potential

Remsen Street, Montague Street Extension Experiment

This promenade in Brooklyn certainly offers the most beautiful view of Manhattan and is a great place to stroll, walk your dog or just sit and rest, but it lacks other amenities that other promenades, and even bridges (Paris Bridges) are missing.

There are few amenities and little to do. There is a possibility of adding a small cafe at each end of the Promenade to enhance the experience of being here.

Connecting Montague Street with Brooklyn Heights Promenade

Activating The Brooklyn Heights Promenade represents an enormous opportunity to add some small features that give it a richness to make it even more special. A few small kiosks, or cafe could make it a strong gathering place for the Brooklyn Heights Community and enhance the experience for visitors and residents alike.

This is the access directly from Montague Street

Some Thoughts:

The entire promenade is very stark and not very inviting except for the extraordinary view. By just adding a few items to experiment with, the community could see what might be possible in the future.. It could be considered a series of experiment as a way to get it started, something we call an LQC (Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper) intervention.

Any new seating needs to be either fixed or very heavy. The few people we have talked to are concerned that someone might take the lighter seating and throw it over the railing. The three examples from Porto and Paris along the Seine in Paris might be potential examples.

We think there are other small activations that could add a lot to the experience along the Promenade. Once you get started, other ideas will very likely arise and should be encouraged.

One example for Seating is the New Paris Bench

One of the best innovations in public seating that we've ever seen is what we call the New Paris Bench, an element that has been a key of the Paris Plage, a public space project which has activated and fundamentally changed the perception of entire sections of the Seine River.

A seemingly simple design with multiple ways people can use it.

What is unique about these benches is how distinctly share-able they are: how much they seem to invite different groups of people to inhabit the same space.

The bench: A simple re-thinking of a classic style of public seating.

The design of the bench is simple, but brilliant: the bench part is designed to be two "backsides" deep, an invitation to sharing that is enhanced by a large central tabletop and a wheelchair-ready side.

As to the cafe (or whatever there might be here), the images suggest temporary ones like the example in Stockholm or even mobile ones. This needs more discussion but adding refreshment is an important step.

Miscellaneous Mobil Carts/Temporary Kiosks that could be a possible Candidate

Stockholm – Shallow cafe and seating along a promenade leading down to the waterfront

Paris Waterfront Seating

Paris - a recently added bench along the Left Bank

This plank seating is artistically arranged to be very functional for many types of uses.

Seating - Other Possibilities

This contemporary bench in Porto, Portugal is very adaptable to different ways of people using it.

Paris

Exhibitions along Luxembourg Gardens and the Seine

The Louvre Museum has been actively involved in bringing art to the Paris Plage in a number of locations. the Brooklyn promenade can also have exhibitions of this sort.

**Photo along Luxembourg Gardens Paris**

**Lourve Exhibit and Blackboard along the Seine**

Paris Bridges

Connecting three streets entranceways together into a promenading experience

But most of the bridges add significantly to connecting the two sides of the Seine, and provide amenities and ample space to take it all in.

Pont Neuf, which opened in 1607, long before the Paris Plage, was the first bridge to cross the Seine, and is one of the most social of Paris’s many bridges, primarily because of multiple places to pause, enjoy the view or just pass time. The connection of these bridges to the other waterfront spaces is vital: For example, when it comes to Pont Neuf, the bridge was designed with numerous alcoves that jut out above the river. This provides places for people to sit, for street entertainers to perform, and for artists to create.

Google Earth image and current images of the first bridge to cross the Seine in a single span.

Other bridges also add to the waterfront experience in Paris.

Our work on revitalizing public spaces around the world for over 50 years with the Placemaking Movement has given us insights into what works in these places and a sense of how some of what we have seen around the world could be applied to Brooklyn. We hope these discussion posts can lead to improvements that we can all enjoy and show the rest of the world how great Brooklyn is.

Brooklyn

Our family lives in Cobble Hill. Kathy and I work together with our two sons. Kathy and I work on the Social Life Project while Ethan and Josh lead PlacemakingX , a global network that grew out of the work we collectively did at Project for Public Spaces starting in 1975, creating placemaking campaigns and catalytic projects in over 3500 communities around the world. They were led and implemented locally with a big impact as part of a fast growing Placemaking Movement. Our two programs are managed by Josh as part of The Placemaking Fund.

Our Brooklyn team also includes Steve Davies, Madeley Rodriguez and Chris Heitmann.

The mission of the Social Life Project is to incite a renaissance of community connection in public spaces around the globe. Through our online publication, presentations, campaigns, and catalytic projects, we can create transformative impact on communities everywhere. Our work grows out of more than 50 years devoted to building the global placemaking movement. It is an initiative of the Placemaking Fund, along with PlacemakingX — a global network of leaders who together accelerate placemaking as a way to create healthy, inclusive, and beloved communities. We gladly accept donations to advance our work.