NY Times Highlights restored urban waterways

As we are working to restore the brook of Brook Park and Brook Avenue, the NY Times has taken notice of this global movement.

A River Runs Under It

SEOUL, South Korea — For half a century, a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting this bustling city.

Andrew C. Revkin
Image by Jean Chung for The New York Times

After its opening in 2005, hundreds of thousands of people have visited the new stream with friends and family.

The waterway had been a centerpiece of Seoul since a king of the Choson Dynasty selected the new capital 600 years ago, enticed by the graceful meandering of the stream and its 23 tributaries. But in the industrial era after the Korean War, the stream, by then a rank open sewer, was entombed by pavement and forgotten beneath a lacework of elevated expressways as the city’s population swelled toward 10 million.

Today, after a $384 million recovery project, the stream, called Cheonggyecheon, is liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks. Picnickers cool their bare feet in its filtered water, and carp swim in its tranquil pools. ...

Read more and comment below

Comment here

Featuring our Brook in the news

Rewiring the City

by NICK JURAVICH with photographs by BLAINE DAVIS

Stepping off the 6 train at Brook Avenue, I emerge into the heart of the South Bronx. To the south, the nine towers of the Mill Brook Houses rise 16 stories above the Deegan and Bruckner Expressways, a quintessential Robert Moses landscape, while to the north, Brook Avenue stretches away through a masonry canyon of five-story apartment blocks with grocery stores, salons, and fast food joints at street level.

The neighborhood is one of the most densely populated areas in the United States, and its reputation precedes it; this is what people are alluding to when they talk about the “inner city.” There’s nary a natural feature in sight.

Three blocks north, I’m standing at the edge of a muddy depression in what remains of an asphalt play lot while Aaron Petersohn conjures up a wholly different scene: a babbling brook alive with fish, frogs, and salamanders, shaded by native trees whose branches ring with birdsong. It is not a sweet reminiscence, though we are standing where a stream once ran, but a vision for the future. Mr. Petersohn is the project director for the Brook Restoration Project at Brook Park, an ambitious plan to “daylight” a portion of a long-buried waterway and create a verdant wetland in the heart of the South Bronx.

Click here for the full article, and many pics!

FoBP Harlem River Advocacy in the news...

City Council approves Lower Concourse rezoning

by DANIEL BEEKMAN
"When Department of City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden looks at the Lower Concourse, she pictures a Harlem River promenade. She pictures skyscraping condos, corner stores, lofts and a waterfront park. Burden pictures a rusty neighborhood remade for residential and commercial development.

When Friends of Brook Park director Harry Bubbins looks at the Lower Concourse, he pictures..." something different.

Read the rest if the article at:
Click here for the full article.

Double Your Gift To FoBP!

Thanks to a couple of our generous supporters, your donation will be doubled up until July 22nd!. This matching grant opportunity is a great time for you to consider giving towards our efforts. Give in early July and your $10 will be $20. Your $500 will be $1000. Our kind anonymous donors will match up to $5000, so help us get there as soon as possible. With your contribution today, we will start off summer strong! See the link at the end of this newsletter to give today.

So give today!
Click here to donate online.

And be a part of all this! Your gift is doubled up until July 22nd! Please make a monetary contribution of $10, $50, $100 or more. If you have participated in any of our programs and activities and found our work important or inspiring, please give, and share this with your circles and on facebook. Your $25 gift will be $50. Your $100 will be $200. Your $1000 will be $2000. So give today!
You can invest in our efforts right here.