CBH Talk | Eric W. Sanderson on Brooklyn’s Lost and Future Waterfront

In honor of Earth Day, join renowned landscape ecologist Eric W. Sanderson for a visual journey to pre-1609 Brooklyn with its landscape shaped by water, wetlands, and rich ecological systems, followed by an exploration of the inspiring efforts to reclaim and reimagine Brooklyn’s waterfront today.

Presented in partnership with Brooklyn Greenway Initiative and the NYC Greenways Coalition, and moderated by The City’s climate reporter Samantha Maldonado, Sanderson will draw on new research and visual renderings from his forthcoming book Before New York, a five-borough sequel to his groundbreaking Mannahatta. 

Focusing on four key Brooklyn sites—Wallabout Bay, Coney Island, Sunset Park, and Red Hook – Sanderson will shine a spotlight on how the pre-colonial shoreline functioned, and what that history can teach us now. He and Maldonado will explore how critical gaps in Brooklyn’s waterfront greenway, all vulnerable coastal areas, might be transformed through nature-based solutions. His research, much of it sourced from the collections of the Center for Brooklyn History and the Brooklyn Historical Society, offers a powerful framework for understanding how the borough’s ecological past can inform more resilient and imaginative waterfront planning today.

The program will also spotlight the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative’s advocacy to complete the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway and its 2016 transformation of the Naval Cemetery Landscape in the Brooklyn Navy Yard into a thriving natural area, pollinator meadow, and public green space. Now nearly a decade old, this project stands as a compelling model for reclaiming underused urban land and restoring ecological function along the greenway. BGI Executive Director Hunter Armstrong will make a brief introduction about the organization’s on-going work.