Arts and Recreation as Environmental Activism: Reimagining Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek and Gowanus Canal in the 21st Century

By Carl Zimring

"This project investigates how arts and recreational activities such as kayaking and developing nature walks represent strategies to mitigate pollution in urban waterways in Brooklyn. Though Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal have distinct histories, both have been used extensively to sink biological wastes and both received persistent pollutants from neighboring industries in the 19th and 20th centuries as New York City industrialized. At the turn of the 21st century, artists and two community groups (the Newtown Creek Alliance and Gowanus Dredgers) began developing recreational activities as part of a strategy to (in the words of the Newtown Creek Alliance) restore community health, water quality, habitat, access, and vibrant commerce in and around these waterways. The chapter considers how this strategy has affected the changing uses and mitigation efforts in both waterways, including federal designation of both as Superfund sites in 2010, local rezoning and gentrification in adjacent neighborhoods, and the development of infrastructure such as the Newtown Creek Nature Walk to reimagine postindustrial futures for these industrialized bodies of water.

This project will be available as a chapter in Philip Hayward (ed.), Blue-Green Rehabilitation: Tourism and Leisure in River Cities. Egham, UK: CABI, to be published in May 2025. Support for this project comes from the Center for Critical Discard Research. "