Booklet Series Book 2: Natural Environments Small Cities Lab
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1 Booklet Series Book 2: Natural Environments Small Cities Lab Exploring opportunities for small city communities to reclaim, reimagine, and reconnect with their rivers, coastlines, and natural environments.
2 Rowhouses in Allentown, PA Hoosic River Revival, Pittsfield, MA. (ARCADE) Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025
3 Small City Natural Environments Waterfronts emerged as one of the most valued and consistently discussed dimensions of small-city life. Rivers and coastlines have shaped where small cities were established, how they developed, and how residents understand their sense of place and identity. At the same time, many waterfronts are effected by industrial decline, infrastructure barriers, and accelerating climate risks that limit public access and connectivity. In response, cities are working to restore their waterfronts as environmental, cultural, and economic assets. This raises important questions about how to activate waterfronts that can balance these priorities, while most importantly re-building residents’ relationships to water. Since small cities share similar waterfront histories, there is a significant opportunity to collaborate, exchange strategies, and reimagine how communities can reclaim and reconnect with their rivers and coastlines. How can we restore and reimagine our relationships to our rivers and coasts?
4 Waterfront Themes Many small cities were established around rivers and bodies of water, and a majority of participants identified their waterfront as both a defining feature and one of their city’s greatest assets. At the same time, they are impacted by pollution, environmental damage, and uneven access. Waterfront discussions coalesced around four recurring themes: Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 Industry and Pollution Long-term impacts of former manufacturing and shipping activity have left harmful effects on the environmental and public health. Re-development (Tensions) Cities are navigating redeveloping their waterfronts while balancing competing priorities: maintaining industrial or maritime activity, expanding recreation and open space, or creating new housing. Access Issues and Mismatches Highways, industrial zones, or poorly planned development separate neighborhoods from waterfronts, creating a disconnect between residents and these valued spaces. Climate Change Threats Flooding, erosion, and rising water levels make investment and maintenance on the waterfront even more pressing.
5 Small City Natural Environment • Themes Idustrial Legacy and Pollution Redevelopment (Tensions) Climate Change Threats Access Issues / Mismatches 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 Participants in New Haven, Providence, and Bethlehem think highly of their waterfronts, but note lingering pollution of manufacturing and shipping activity on their waterfronts. Positive momentum toward redevelopment in Easton and Providence. Ongoing tension between preservation and redevelopment in Ann Arbor and Martha’s Vineyard. Low connectivity, with mid-20th-century infrastructure in some cases completely severing access. Overall, these participants still praised their rivers as “good assets.” Strong riverfront parks in Hudson and Harrisburg, but flood risk threatens long-term stability. In Stamford, waterfront access is improving, yet storm and flood risks jeopardize that progress. The chart above displays participant "quality" ratings of various waterfront attributes. Each bubble represents one participant’s entry, describing a “river,” “coastline,” “bay,” or a specific river or waterfront in their city: “Lehigh River,” “Palsaic River,” and “Long Island Sound Waterfront.” Participants rated the attribute they identified on a scale from 1 (liability) to 5 (asset). We then organized the chart by theme, grouping together the attributes that corresponded to the same theme along a connecting line.
6 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 Redevelopment Trajectories Waterfronts are a common origin point for cities, and there are familiar timelines in the ways these spaces have evolved. Across cities, there were two overarching scenarios with communities diverging along different trajectories as they grapple with how these histories have unfolded locally and their capacity to respond. Industry on the Ohio river. (RiverWise)
7 Small City Natural Environment • Scenarios For many communties, this history began in the late 19th, early 20th centuries with the establishment of an industrial site along a river, bay, or ocean. As industrial decline spread in the mid-to-late 20th century, many of these facilities closed, leaving behind significant environmental legacies. Residual pollution and longterm contamination became defining features of these waterfronts. In New Haven, along the Long Island Sound, participants noted that “residual pollution from the industrial history needs to be cleaned up.” Similar concerns were raised along the Lehigh River in Bethlehem, where participants described how “pollution has been a problem for decades,” referring to Scenario 1: Brownfield Sites: Lingering Pollution, Reclamation, and Redevelopment the contamination left by Bethlehem Steel. When industry left, it often took investment with it, leaving cities to contend with contaminated land and waterways and the lasting constraints they impose without sufficient resources. While participants emphasized that “the de-pollution of the river should be a key priority,” they also acknowledged a familiar challenge: “it costs money” and investment these communities may not have.
8 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 Reclamation In some communities, however, this trajectory has shifted. The long arc from industrial use to decline has been met with new waves of investment, raising questions about how to balance economic activity with ecological and public goals. As one participant asked, how can cities “preserve or conserve ecological function of landscapes while still attracting and retaining capital / business?” In Newark, New Jersey, the Palsaic River is still “mostly used for trade” and continues to play an economic role. This comes with tradeoffs for residents, who noted the absence of “riverfront parks” and that the “water is not clear enough for recreation.” Despite these tensions, participants more often emphasized reclaiming waterfronts for recreation and public access than preserving industrial or maritime uses. In St. Paul, Minnesota, along the Mississippi River, waterfront redevelopment has focused on both “recreational and economic generation.” In Easton, Pennsylvania, along the Bushkill Creek, efforts center on “ecological restoration and a planned greenway project.” Providence offers another example of this transition, where participants described a “revitalized waterfront” featuring “water recreation and parks.” They also noted that this transformation followed “a long time to clean up the canal,” underscoring that reclaiming industrial waterfronts requires Prior Use Decline
9 Small City Natural Environment • Scenarios significant financial resources and longterm political and social commitments. As cities navigate development tradeoffs, waterfronts often become focal points for new open and green spaces. Redevelopment Choices As cities continue to prioritize open space and activate waterfronts for public access, a pressing question emerges: how should cities balance investments in parks and recreation with the growing demand for new housing? As development pressures intensify, particularly in high-amenity waterfront areas, decisions about land use become increasingly consequential. In Ann Arbor, a protected greenbelt that surrounds the city and hugs much of the Huron River is “good for open space preservation but also limits development.” In Martha’s Vineyard, “huge amounts of land protected from development” for coastal conservation is “great for a natural island, [but a] problem for housing!” Echoing these concerns, other participants emphasized that “housing locations need to adapt,” and that cities must “identify locations for new housing.” Communities face difficult choices about whether these landscapes should remain primarily public open space or responsibly accommodate new housing, especially as watefronts become more desirable places to live. Interim Activation Reclamation
10 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 In other communties, the defining challenge was infrastructure expansion, which created mismatches between the built and natural environment. Highways and other infrastructure were built along – or directly over – waterways, limiting access and cutting nearby neighborhoods off from the waterfront. In Middletown, Connecticut, participants described how a highway constructed over the river significantly restricts public access. Elijah Huge emphasizes that “the river is the reason for the city,” but now “a state highway separates it from the city and erases the river.” Completed in 1969, CT-9 was built directly along the Connecticut River, severing the downtown core from its waterfront. Tall, overgrown trees lining the highway further obscure the water, making the river almost invisible from the city itself. Similar mismatches between waterways and public life were described in Meadville, where the Mill Run stream “runs through downtown.” While some access remains, the river corridor has been paved over, reducing both its ecological function and its potential as a recreational space. These infrastructure decisions made decades ago, particularly in the 1970s, continue to constrain how waterfronts function today. By prioritizing cars over people and place, communties inherited waterfronts that are difficult to reach, underused, and increasingly vulnerable to erosion and neglect, despite their central role in the city’s history and identity. Climate Change Risks: Progress and Undoings The challenge of reconnecting people to their waterfronts is unfolding as climate change accelerates. Rising seas, frequent flooding, and erosion are compounding the consequences of decades-old development decisions, increasing the urgency of delayed improvements while threatening to undermine recent progress. In Stamford, participants noted that while “public access is getting better,” “flood risk [is] getting worse, fast.” In Hudson, NY, the “sea level rise may erase walkable park” which is “one of the only accessible and walkable spaces in the city.” Efforts to restore public access to waterfronts may be outpaced or undone by rising seas and flooding. Scenario 2: Mismatch: Built over Natural
11 Small City Natural Environment • Scenarios Harrisburg offers an example of how waterfront redevelopment can simulateously improve public assess and climate resilience. The city’s longterm waterfront revitalization initiative was originally undertaken to address the public health hazards left by historic industrial activity along the river. Over time, this work has evolved beyond remediation to include the restoration and expansion of interconnected blue and green spaces, such as Wildwood Park, described as “a restored wetland area that cleans the air, provides opportunities for recreation and wildlife habitat.” Here, reclamation is multifunctional; it introduces greenspace and trails to enhance public access and ecological health, but also contributes to climate adaptation. The park and wetland area “helps mitigate flooding.” Responsible waterfront redevelopment can serve multiple purposes, ehancing public access and reducing flood risk. –Jennifer Gomez While we did decrease the intensity of some allowable uses within neighborhoods, we also created more consistency... Harrisburg, view from City Island Park.
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13 Rivers Connecting 5+ Small Cities Co-Lab Cities Small River Cities Small City Natural Environment • Scenarios
14 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 Despite local trajectories in waterfront evolution, overlapping waterfront challenges point to opportunities for shared learning and coordination. One participant explicitly referenced the potential for a “Rivertown network,” suggesting that small cities facing similar waterfront conditions could benefit from collective strategies, shared tools, and regional collaboration to navigate their waterfronts’ futures. The challenges for waterfronts are about reconciling an industrial past and preparing for future environmental needs. Cities must address the legacies of industrial and infrastructure development, remediating pollution, mitigating environmental damage, and repairing disrupted connections between neighborhoods and waterways. At the same time, they must prepare for growing climate risks. Rising water levels, increased flooding, and erosion make careful planning and investment more urgent than ever. Across these conversations, one consistent thread emerged about the importance of reconnecting residents socially and culturally to waterfronts, which industrial uses and infrastructure previously severed. These landscapes are important cultural assets, shaping cities’ histories and identities. Laura Stedenfeld from Easton says the Delaware River “defines the whole identity of the city.” Reclaiming waterfronts therefore offers an opportunity to reintroduce more connected, pre-industrial relationships to rivers and coasts. This requires a reclamation process but importantly social activation that helps residents reimagine how they can engage with these spaces. One idea gaining traction is interim activation. In several cities, organizers are exploring temporary or phased uses between the closure of industrial sites and full-scale redevelopment. Rather than waiting years or decades for complete remediation, interim activation introduces public programming, art, trails, or pop-up events that re-establish a social connection to the waterfront. These approaches allow communities to begin rebuilding relationships with their rivers while longer-term cleanup and planning are still underway. Charting a New Course: Collaboration and Interim Activation
15 Small City Natural Environment • Scenarios In Middletown, a state highway obscures the river, cutting neighborhoods off from access; in Meadville, the river runs through downtown, creating infrastructure challenges. Little momentum exists to address these mismatches. High-scores for flood risk and rapid erosion! Low scores reflect limited investment and insufficient action on climate issues. Idustrial Legacy and Pollution Redevelopment (Tensions) Climate Change Threats Access Issues / Mismatches 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 New Haven and Bethlehem participants say their cities are not prioritizing de-pollution or waterfront development. Providence received the highest score for revitalization, although it “took a long time to clean up.” Participants from St. Paul and Easton gave moderate change for ongoing waterfront redevelopment for recreation and ecological restoration. The chart above displays participant "change" rating of various waterfront attributes. Each bubble represents one participant’s entry. Participants rated the attribute they identified on a scale from 1 (slow) to 5 (fast).
16 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 No Whiteboards, No Post-its Building relationships between communities and their local natural ecosystems is our collective mandate as designers in the twenty-first century. This reflection on the first ten years of our practice — ARCADE — organizes our process for doing this work into a format that invites modification and expansion by other designers for their own local communities. We founded our office in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a post-industrial city of approximately 40,000 people in the Northern Forests ecological region that spans the border between the United States and Canada. We are trained as architects, and returned to our home region early in our careers when we received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to start an experimental architecture-andpoetry project called The Mastheads as a way of reviving local heritage in a community facing economic, social, and environmental challenges after the departure of its manufacturing base in the 1980s. We are not trained as landscape FEATURE Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson, lead ARCADE (arc-ade.org), a community-driven design practice based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Troy, New York, whose work interweaves architecture, landscape, urbanism, research, happenings, and art. Design Engagement in Nature Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson
17 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • ARCADE designers, or ecologists, or foresters, or naturalists. But as we continued working directly with communities after launching The Mastheads, we realized that building meaningful connections between residents and their surrounding natural environments was one of the most impactful, and initially most available, openings for us to strengthen our local social fabric. As many young designers know, commissions for public buildings will go to firms with “more built work.” Projects with minimal construction are more flexible. The work of “artists” can be discretionary, and outdoor “structures” are a more flexible designation than “buildings.” Our public work began to take the shape of designing community happenings and outdoor installations because that was a space and scale outside of the public procurement mandates that often send local work to large corporate firms based outside of the community. From our first public project, we have worked to find pathways that fund the type of design we believe is necessary — learning from and within a community — in ways that keep “the public” as our clients, and allow us to experiment with engagement methodology as an artform in itself. We build partnerships with local government, local non-profits, and neighborhood action groups and write grants to support multiple stages of public projects — from design, to construction, to ongoing programming. Two of these projects — the Westside Riverway Park on the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, MA and the Riverwalk along the Hoosic River in North Adams, MA — are the focus of this piece. The following sequence organizes the broad steps we take to understand, design, and support ongoing and meaningful engagement between communities and their natural environments. 1. Gather Memories Outdoor projects on municipal land are part of the public realm. Every
18 site is connected to its immediate community by generations of stories and experiences that shape the local perception of that site. We begin public projects by inviting neighbors to share their memories of the site — whether it is a particular neighborhood block, natural feature, local business network, or the set of traditions that surround them. We have gathered memories through videotaped elder interviews, through sitting with diners at a free-lunch hub and recording their neighborhood park memories, with poetry prompts at block parties, and at oral history tables. We expand on what we learn through research in the Local History departments of our public libraries and through municipal Historical Societies, with the goal of connecting the project to the larger culture and context of the site. We compile and share this information back with the community at in-person events, gatherings, exhibitions, and limited local social media networks. Resident memories and site history create the backbone of the project “story.” How did we get here? Why did we get here? Where have we been and where do we want to go? 2. Design Events Where People Want to Be Don’t hold community input sessions at City Hall at dinnertime. No one wants to go! In the case of the Westside Riverway Park, we worked closely with a neighborhood leadership group, Westside Legends, to design events at the future park site that drew together all ages of residents and their families who came out to support them. We started building a celebratory culture around the site before any design work had begun. We shared community stories we had gathered about the site to set the tone for input on the new park. What should it feel like? What should happen there? How can it build on tradition and what can it offer that is new? Always provide free food! 3. Create a Repeating Format In the case of the Westside Riverway Park, our events took on a repeating format of Block Parties. We learned at our second public event, the Westside Women’s Circle, that everyone missed the neighborhood Block Parties that had stopped happening in the 1970s. We started to understand the format of the engagement events, as well as a core future function of the park, to be the revival of Block Parties (which are still active at the Westside Riverway Park Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025
19 eight years later!). In the case of the Hoosic River, we needed to find a way to connect people with an entire 2.5-mile stretch of the river, which crossed through many different natural and urbanistic conditions. We designed a monthly format of Riverwalks in partnership with the local advocacy group Hoosic River Revival, guided by a local parks manager, that broke the full length into five sections. Each Riverwalk was held the last weekend of the month, included a free sketchbook and drawing tools, and culminated with a delicious table of local food provided by rotating North Adams restaurants. Each month’s Riverwalk picked up where the previous one had left off, creating an intuitive format that allowed community members to map the river and its relationship to the city into their minds. 4. Invite New Physical Encounters Physical experiences are important in connecting communities to their natural environments. The Hoosic Riverwalks included hikes through the woods, easy strolls on sidewalks, explorations of dams and bridges, and one session focused on trash cleanup along an overgrown path ringing an oxbow. Surveys at the end of these walks repeatedly showed extra enthusiasm for the more physically challenging components — bushwhacking! pulling tires out of the undergrowth! — alongside an appreciation for universally accessible alternatives. At the Westside Riverway Park, local environmental groups including the Berkshire Environmental Action Team and the Housatonic Valley Association Small City Natural Environment • Feature • ARCADE
20 bring canoes, kayaks, and trained attendants to help neighbors move through the river along the park’s edge, and to meet visiting turtles and other wildlife. 5. New Thinking Pathways While we sometimes design surveys to quantify feedback from community participants, more frequently we provide design exercises that allow the entire team — neighbors and designers together — to build a shared visual language around the project. These include base maps, where we ask residents to indicate the path of their own personal walking loops, key sites of significance, or problem areas. They include model-making activities with kids designing and writing about their dream park pavilions. They include sketchbooks where participants in the Riverwalk can see their familiar surroundings in a new way through drawing — opening up possibilities for sharing ideas on the page. In partnership with The Mastheads’ Literary Director, we provide poetry prompts for residents to describe the relationships between their neighborhood, community, and family. 6. Tell the Story Once a general identity, program, and scope for the project response begins to cohere, we plan a local exhibition where we tell the story back to a broader community and to the residents who have participated over months of community happenings. This includes displaying their work, their words, their architectural models, photographs, drawings, memories, and histories alongside the emerging design. This presentation happens at the Schematic Design phase of development. It is an opportunity to show an early iteration, Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025
21 receive input, and gauge the response. Typically, conceptual design ideas have already been shared informally at public gatherings leading up to the exhibition, so that there is already familiarity with and community voice within the design proposal. 7. Mock It Up One of the key ambitions of extensive community design engagement is to keep residents engaged through as many phases of work as possible. If the larger motivation of this work is to build deep connections between communities and the natural environments that they must steward, it is critical to build ownership around the design as a bridge between the social and ecological conditions. Mocking up the proposed design experience is one step in doing this. At the Westside Riverway Park, we tested out different locations for the eventual performance pavilion by using moveable tents at Block Parties during the design stage. At the Hoosic Riverwalk, we built two full-scale “River Flags” to test out the concept of a visual marker announcing the river’s route through the city. 8. Keep the Thinking Alive We do not see our role as architects ending once construction of a public project is complete. We remain deeply engaged with the communities forged during the design process to continue addressing neighborhood issues. For example, design engagement surrounding the Westside Riverway Park led to the Westside Legends spearheading affordable housing initiatives in the neighborhood, a Redlining Study commissioned by local bank Greylock Federal Credit Union, and a new parklet to safely route pedestrians through a maze of vehicular byways produced in the 1960s and 70s as part of Urban Renewal. We have learned through the process of situating our practice and our life’s work deeply into our own local community that while global-scale social and environmental issues feel intractable, relationships between humans and ecology start at the scale of the individual. We believe that designers must deeply invest in social development and ecological stewardship as a holistic goal to contribute to the wellbeing of the future of our planet. For us, the promise of this work depends on building deep trust, and begins in our own neighborhoods, our own forests, rivers, and meadows, alongside the communities we know best. Small City Natural Environment • Feature • ARCADE
22 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 On the Waterfront: Piloting, or Other Ways to Begin In thumbing through design magazines and scrolling online, it would appear that urban waterfronts across the globe have been undergoing an unprecedented transformation. On sites like Domino Park in New York, the West Bund in Shanghai, or the HafenCity in Hamburg, lands that were once places of major industrial production now become places for cappuccinos and croissants. Fallow, inaccessible, toxic land yields to mixeduse megadevelopments with modest (but often iconic!) blue-green public spaces surrounded by high density, and high end, housing and commercial development through a series of neoliberal financial transactions. In these global cities, real estate demand is so torrential that the waterfront will inevitably be developed (and also protected), leaving the primary challenge for the urban designer or planner to direct the flood of global capital to ensure public access and aesthetic coherence. But there is another kind of waterfront, one that characterizes the vast majority of American cities. These are the postindustrial edges of places like Bridgeport, New London, and West Haven, Connecticut, as well as Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Here, the challenge is not managing a flood of capital; it is managing a drought. In these smaller, “legacy” cities, the factories receded decades ago, leaving behind a scarred, contaminated, and often flood-prone landscape. Unlike in Brooklyn or Hamburg, there is no rising FEATURE Andrei Harwell, AIA, Executive Director, Yale Urban Design Workshop Alan Plattus, Founding Director, Yale Urban Design Workshop
23 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • YUDW tide of developers waiting to break ground. In this context, the traditional tool of planning, the “Master Plan”—a fixed, ten- or twenty-year vision of comprehensive redevelopment—is often an exercise in futility. We have all seen, and perhaps produced, these plans: beautiful renderings of promenades and mixed-use towers that sit on municipal shelves, gathering dust, because the economic engine required to jumpstart them simply does not materialize. The Long Shadow of the Bulldozer However, the resistance to the “Grand Plan” in our cities is not merely economic; it is historical. In Connecticut, perhaps more than anywhere else in America, the concept of “comprehensive planning” is inextricably linked to the trauma of Urban Renewal. In the post-war era, cities like New Haven, Bridgeport, and New London were the laboratories for a previous generation of “Grand Visions.” These visions, backed by federal highway funds and the arrogance of the tabula rasa, did not stitch the city to the water; they severed it. Grand infrastructure projects—most notably the interstate highways—were driven through the heart of coastal communities, acting as asphalt levees that physically cut off the downtowns and neighborhoods from the water, while spewing toxic PM 2.5 that have caused negative health outcomes across adjacent neighborhoods. Planners of that era viewed the industrial waterfront not as a community asset, but as a place to be separated from where we live. They replaced finegrained neighborhoods with elevated expressways, parking garages, and single-use superblocks, turning cities away from the water. Famously, in New Haven, some students don’t even realize they are in a waterfront city. The legacy of this era is a residue of deep skepticism left at the highwater mark of federal intervention. For communities that survived the bulldozer, a “Master Plan” looks like a threat. It implies displacement, eminent domain, and the erasure of local memory. The perceived failure of planning in the public imagination is that it serves only the wealthy and powerful, sacrificing community for commuters. But the real failure of Urban Renewal was its inability to handle complexity. It treated the city as a machine to be simplified rather than an ecosystem to be cultivated. It destroyed the delicate social and economic ecologies that made these places resilient, replacing them with
24 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 brittle, monolithic top-down systems that continue to fester in their hosts. Therefore, the difficulty of change faces these two obstacles: a lack of access to capital to build, and a lack of trust to make big plans. To overcome these, we need a methodology that allows for compelling visions of change, but features other ways to begin than the bulldozer; a way of working that values what is there. It is incremental, experimental, adaptive and open-ended, allowing for course corrections and contingency over time. Piloting and Ways To Begin At the Yale Urban Design Workshop (YUDW), one way we confront this dual-challenge is through “piloting.” A pilot is not merely “Phase One” of a large construction project, nor is it just a small project. A true pilot is a representative piece of a larger vision: a semi-autonomous fragment, valuable and more or less complete, at least for a time, in its own right, yet generative, suggestive of possible next moves. Whether permanent or temporary, its value lies in its achievability: it can be realized in a short timeframe with limited resources, bypassing the paralysis that kills larger schemes. Crucially, it contains a “testable kernel”—a sounding weight dropped into the future. By making the larger vision visible in microcosm, the pilot channels community desire and provides the proof-of-concept necessary to attract the capital or political will for the rest. The goal of a pilot project is often to bring several larger systems or urban layers into conversation with each other through design. Critically, the pilot must always do more than one thing. It cannot be a mono-functional infrastructure; it must be a multi-valent node where ecology, economy, and social life intersect. While we typically conceive of pilots as being in a specific place with strict construction boundaries, they possess a networked logic. Their effects are designed to ripple outward, saturating surrounding areas and influencing systems far beyond their physical footprint. They are classic examples of what Edward Said has called “transitive,” as opposed to intransitive, beginnings (Said, Beginnings: Intentions and Methods, 1975). This methodology finds a strong parallel in the Tactical Urbanism movement. Tactical urbanism deployed short-term, low-cost interventions—pop-up bike lanes, parklets, open streets—to instigate long-term change. While often “guerrilla” in nature, the core logic connects with our work: action should precede policy. By physically demonstrating the viability
25 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • YUDW of a public plaza for a single weekend, advocates could bypass years of abstract debate. At the YUDW, we adopt this agility but professionalize it, marrying the speed of the tactical urbanist with the strategic depth of the urban planner to de-risk complex sites. Crucially, the pilot is also a strategy for risk mitigation. In the context of the post-industrial American waterfront, risks are rarely singular; they are compounded. A single site might face a “rising tide” of challenges: deep-soil contamination, flood vulnerability, and regulatory ambiguity simultaneously. For traditional capital, this saturation of risk is paralyzing. The pilot de-risks the larger vision by attacking these liabilities in miniature. It allows a city to remediate a single acre rather than fifty, or to permit one prototype building rather than a district, proving that the specific toxicities—both environmental and bureaucratic—can be navigated. It transforms the unknown dangers of a polluted site into calculated, manageable variables. Over the last decade, much of our work along the Connecticut and nearby New York coastlines has explored applying this kind of logic, using strategic fragments to address wicked problems Seaside Villages, Rain Garden.
26 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 that the market has failed to address. Some examples have in ways succeeded and others failed, but all provide lessons about the potentials and pitfalls of how to begin. Seaside Village: The First Proof One of our earliest efforts to use this methodology was during a master plan project for a historic housing development in Bridgeport, Connecticut called Seaside Village. Built by the US Government during World War I to house munitions workers, but finished too late, Seaside Village is an architectural gem—a garden suburb of brick terraces and semi-detached homes designed by R. Clipston Sturgis and Arthur Shurtleff. It is beloved by its residents, but it was built on a filled tidal marsh at a very low elevation; for a century, the water has been trying to reclaim it. As sea levels rose and storm patterns intensified, the streets of this historic area began to flood with alarming regularity. The neighborhood was threatened not just by the water, but by the paralysis of the solution. The grey engineering fix—massive pumps and pipe overhauls to eject water from the streets was too expensive for the cooperative to afford and too small for the city or state government to prioritize.
27 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • YUDW Instead of waiting for a multi-milliondollar sewer separation, the YUDW worked with the community to pilot a piece of “green infrastructure.” We identified a small, manageable site within the village adjacent to a parking lot that chronically flooded—and through a volunteer community building process, designed and installed a pilot rain garden. The rain garden was modest, but it effectively reframed water that had previously been a nuisance into something attractive. But more importantly it created a place that could be occupied by residents, and around which they could come together socially to manage the garden. The Seaside Village pilot demonstrated a new way of thinking about the water that diverged from the 20th century idea of making the problem disappear down the drain. It showed that “living with water” didn’t mean surrendering to it; it meant integrating it into the landscape and into daily life. This small pilot served as a “proof of concept” that released a reservoir of political will for what came next. Adjacent homeowners began to see their own properties not as victims of the tide, but as participants in a larger ecological system, to some extent shifting the neighborhood narrative from defensiveness to stewardship. Resilient Bridgeport: Scaling the Pilot The lessons learned in the intimate courtyards of Seaside Village became the foundation for a much larger ambition: “Resilient Bridgeport.” Just south of Seaside Village lies the South End, a peninsula of mixed industrial and residential uses that was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Following the “Rebuild by Design” competition, the YUDW and our partners took on the task of thinking through flood risk for this entire district. The “Grand Plan” solution—a perimeter wall around the entire South End—was technically possible but socially and economically daunting. It risked turning the neighborhood into a fortress and severing it from the waterfront. If we couldn’t afford to reshape the shoreline of the whole district immediately, could we build a larger “pilot” that proved a new way of living with water at a neighborhood scale? The result was a focus on a specific corridor: a raised street extension and a “stormwater park.” In a state where “flood control” has usually meant concrete walls and channels, this pilot demonstrates that flood infrastructure could be a lush, sunken park that residents could enjoy on sunny days, and which could build social resilience. The design brought
28 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 multiple urban layers into conversation: the park manages the hydrology of the surrounding blocks, provides a safe egress route during emergencies, and creates a new civic gathering space. This pilot serves a critical economic function. In a low-demand market, no investor wants to be the first to build in a flood zone. By using public funds to build a pilot that handles the water and creates a beautiful amenity, the public sector absorbs the risk. The pilot creates a “safe zone”—both hydrologically and financially—where private investment can eventually follow. It sends a signal flare to the market: “This problem is solvable.” West River Crossing: The Urban Pilot Sometimes, the obstacle isn’t flood risk, but property rights and the lingering fear of eminent domain. This was the challenge at the West River Crossing in New Haven. The vision for this site was ambitious: to transform a fragmented industrial waterfront into a vibrant public district with a waterfront park, wateroriented restaurants, and new housing. The challenge was that the waterfront had a fragmented ownership pattern and contained many polluted sites. One active industrial user, Bilco Hatch, had just moved its manufacturing to the Midwest, but hoped to keep their headquarters local where they had been a citizen for many decades. The design solution required a radical realignment of a street to create parcels and an organization that could unlock the waterfront and allow for development. The plan called for a new street that would cut a channel across multiple West Haven
29 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • YUDW private properties. In the era of Urban Renewal, the solution would have been obvious: the city would seize the properties, evict the owners, and clear the land. In the 21st century, that tool is rightfully toxic. Instead, we proposed a pilot based on geometry and negotiation. The city owned only one parcel in the entire district. Rather than waiting to acquire the rest, the YUDW proposed building an office building, a piece of the new street, and a fragment of a public waterfront on that one city-owned site. Crucially, this building was designed to house the headquarters of Bilco Hatch, retaining a key employer in West Haven while freeing up their former industrial site for the park. This single building was designed to act as the pilot for the entire new street grid. By positioning it according to the future street alignment rather than the existing one, the strategy was to physically demonstrate the new spatial configuration. It was an attempt to prove that the new district could be built incrementally, piece by piece, without the heavy hand of eminent domain, and in this way, was a rejection of the “bulldozer” method. The building was intended to act as a localized surge of investment and an example of a new scale and quality of development viable in this City, setting a new architectural standard for the parcels that would follow. New London and Groton: The “Guerrilla” Heritage Park Forty miles east, the cities of New London and Groton faced a different
30 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 variation of the post-industrial problem: fragmentation. The Thames River, which separates the two cities, is a landscape of immense historical power. Between the two cities, they host two historic waterfront forts, a submarine museum with the first nuclear sub, the future National Coast Guard Museum, and a dozen or so other heritage sites related to the water. But here, the waterfront is a patchwork of brownfields, abandoned sites, high speed roads, and rail lines. The “pilot” here was two-fold: a water taxi and a visual identity. First, the water taxi acted as “guerrilla” infrastructure. Instead of waiting for millions of dollars to acquire land and build boardwalks, we launched a boat. This stitched together the existing docks at Fort Trumbull and City Pier in New London with the landing in Groton. Overnight, the insurmountable gulf of the river became a connector, and experiencing it became core to a visit to the region. Second, we needed to make this new connection legible. A boat alone does not make a park; a park requires a sense of place. To achieve this without permanent construction, the YUDW designed and produced a system of temporary signage. These were deployed at every landing point and key heritage site on both sides of the river. This signage unified the disparate sites, creating a “branded” experience that felt coherent even though the physical connections were temporary. A tourist standing at Fort Trumbull could look across the river to Fort Griswold and see the same visual language, reinforcing the idea that the sites are connected and part of one structure. That first pilot has evolved into a sustainable system which runs the water taxi every year, in addition to collaborative programming and events. The whole became greater than the sum of the parts. Fishers Island: The Cultural Pilot Even in places of wealth, the “small city” dynamic can apply if the demographics are distorted. Fishers Island, accessible only by ferry from New London, faces an existential crisis of year-round population loss. It is an enclave of high property values, but its permanent population is extremely fragile. The “market” drives up prices for summer and year-round homes alike, starving the year-round community of access to housing. In this wealthy, conservationminded community, fear of change and outsiders made it difficult to institute comprehensive changes that would keep year-round residents on an island with increasing costs and decreasing vitality. So, we proposed piloting “people.” The intervention here wasn’t infrastructure,
31 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • YUDW but culture: building on an existing nonprofit, we proposed an arts residency that brings a limited number of artists and writers to live and work on the island during the off-season. This residency acts as a “social pilot, “ infusing a new demographic current—young, diverse, creative professionals—into the island’s ecosystem when it is most dormant. The residency activates community spaces with exhibitions and readings, bringing people together, and ripples of this pilot, we hoped, would be felt in the island’s school, its ferry service, and its winter economy, proving that a small injection of cultural capital can help stabilize a community teetering on the edge of becoming a ghost town. Lighthouse Point Park: Piloting as Engagement Currently, we are piloting heavily in our planning work for Lighthouse Point Park in New Haven. The challenge is not about building new infrastructure or navigating property lines, but about understanding how a beloved but underutilized public space can serve a wider community. Traditional planning might begin with a survey or a town hall —methods that often exclude those who cannot attend or articulate their desires in planning-speak. These traditional formats often privilege the loudest voices and can devolve into grievances about past planning failures. Instead, we are using piloting as a form of active community engagement. This summer, we will test the waters by deploying a beer garden within the park - a “testable kernel” of a future park that is more active, social, and economically self-sustaining. By observing how people use the space when amenities are provided—where they sit, how long they stay, and how the event impacts the neighborhood—we gather data that is far more reliable than a questionnaire. The beer garden allows the community to “vote with their feet,” creating a swell of support for new programming. It transforms the planning process from an abstract discussion into a tangible experience, allowing residents to inhabit the future of the park and help shape it in real-time. If the pilot generates noise complaints or traffic snarls, the plan can be adjusted before concrete is poured. If it generates joy and revenue, it provides the undeniable evidence needed to advocate for permanent facilities. It is a way of wading into the water before committing to the swim. The Fragility of the Beginning It is crucial, however, not to romanticize piloting. Piloting is not a silver bullet; it is a stress test. Because pilots are often small, temporary, or contingent, they are inherently fragile. The first danger is that
32 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 the pilot never launches. This was the fate of the West River Crossing proposal. Despite a sound strategy—using city land to retain a major employer and pilot a new street grid—the project was never realized and economic conditions shifted that precluded ongoing effort to get the project done. In this case, the pilot served as a diagnostic tool: it revealed that despite the “cleverness” of the design, the city didn’t have the traction to execute even a single strategic building. The second danger is calibration. A pilot is designed to operate in a specific mode, but it can be swamped when conditions change. In Seaside Village, the pilot rain gardens were calibrated for rainwater— freshwater falling from the sky. They functioned excellently in that mode, managing runoff and beautifying the streetscape. But during Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, the pilot was subjected to a different mode entirely: seawater storm surge. The gardens were inundated with salt water, which killed the freshwater plantings and destroyed large parts of the pilot. This fragility is instructive. It reminds us that “starting small” does not exempt us from the larger forces of economics or climate. A pilot can build a constituency—as the Water Taxi did in New London—but it can also be washed away or shelved if the soil, political or physical, is not ready to receive it. Conclusion In this environment of uncertainty, the “Grand Plan” is insufficient because it requires a leap of faith that no bank is willing to take, and a surrender of agency that no community is willing to accept. The pilot project attempts to bridge that gap. It replaces the rendering with a reality. When a resident in New London sees a boat connecting two severed shores, or an artist on Fishers Island lights up a dark winter storefront, the future stops being a theory and becomes a fact. But as West Haven and Seaside Village remind us, these facts are fragile. They must be tended to. For the post-industrial city, the pilot is not just a way to begin. It is a gamble. But given the alternative—stagnation and decay—it is a gamble worth taking. It allows us to reclaim our waterfronts not by erasing their industrial history or waiting for a boom that may never come, but by planting small, resilient seeds in the cracks of the pavement and hoping they survive the storm.
33 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • YUDW Thames River Heritage Park
34 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 Rivers as Organizing Principal The rivers of Beaver County have long shaped how communities see themselves – economically, historically, and emotionally. For generations, the waterways connected towns through the steady movement of people, goods, and industry. Local identities remained strongly tied to these riverbanks, but over time a broader regional identity fractured. When industry closed, the rivers that once linked communities came to be seen as physical boundaries between them. At RiverWise, Daniel explains, “the rivers are geographically and emotionally at the heart of our decisions,” working to realize once again their potential as a civic asset that can connect communities across the county. The rivers’ enduring presence in the landscape – in the story of how these communities were formed and sustained – makes it a powerful organizing device for collective decision-making and longterm community investment. RiverWise uses extensive community storytelling to reclaim Beaver County’s FEATURE The Small Cities Lab spoke with Daniel Rossi-Keen, PhD, Executive Director of RiverWise, about the significance of the Beaver and Ohio Rivers to the county’s regional identity. Once powerful connectors that structured industry and movement, the rivers later became markers of division and fragmentation. RiverWise asks how the waterways can be reclaimed as an organizing device for cultural and economic benefits.
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