NIKKI SCHOTTE

Coney Island is still well known for its outdoor amusement park that is completely different than the average corporate theme park. It has its own quirky and vibrant atmosphere, offering accessible and affordable entertainment by a mosaic of small and fragmented local amusement operators. It is a democratic mixing place where the polyglot metropolis can escape, bathe and make fun under the seaside sun.

The food production for the amusement park used to be located on Coney Island itself, offering a self-sufficient economic system for its residents. The food industry was producing qualitative food options for the amusement park and a lot of the locals used to work in this particular industry. Coney Island is still a main attraction point for its amusement park, but the local philosophy got lost and nowadays they are importing cheap, non-qualitative, prefabricated sandwiches and burgers from elsewhere, instead of producing them themselves. Combine this with the threat of the Comprehensive Zoning Plan proposed by the Bloomberg Administration, where they are proposing to replace all small local facilities by generic chain and franchising and putting the amusement in the hands of one operator. This could radically change the existing atmosphere of Coney Island in the future, taking away its personal quirky identity. The main goal of my master dissertation lies within stimulating the development of this vulnerable area by activating the local economy, strengthen and empower the neighbourhood community by inner food production facilities for local purposes, with the possible extension to a broader network to increase the food security for a wider asset.

The quality of the public realm is highly important for a successful neighbourhood. The public realm is a vital element that cannot be forgotten in the design of environments, where people want to live and work. It embraces the external places that are accessible to a wide variety of different users. These are the everyday spaces where people move, interact, linger, live and play. There is a lot of invisible harm done by traffic, affecting the social interactions within the neighbourhood. Out of different studies we can conclude that there is an enormous difference in the amount of interactions within a light or a high traffic street. Due to the amount of traffic there are less interactions and social ties between the residents, because people are not likely to cross the street with a high amount of traffic. This phenomenon is also affecting how residents will make use of the neighbourhood services and retail stores. If there is less traffic, people feel safer and they are more likely to shop, act and interact within their own neighbourhood. By proposing to change the current streetscape of Neptune Avenue to the amount of traffic and the functions along the street, we are able to make it more safe and attractive for pedestrians and cyclists to use and interact within the neighbourhood, stimulating them to support the local economy.

The design intent was to set up a specific resilient network that could activate the social and economical activity within the Creek area with attention for the environment and for the wide cultural variety of users and residents. Combining various issues of flooding, food security, unemployment, low education rate and mainly the empowerment of the community. By proposing a closed loop system, where food would be used as the main social and economical activator for the neighbourhood. The design proposal includes: a rooftop farm on top of an existing building, a high performance industrial kitchen incubator that is able to offer affordable kitchen equipment and cooking space, for small local entrepreneurs to start up their own business or to re-open business after being destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, without the huge costs of starting it up from scratch. Allowing the residents to produce and cook their own products with fresh supplies, which they can eventually sell in their own stores or allowing them to provide the neighbouring restaurants, retail stores, the amusement park, schools... . New jobs are created and they are able to provide healthy and various food options for the neighbourhood. As well a storage space where the produced goods and products of the kitchen incubator could be stored and that in combination with a (cooking) workshop space for the community. But also a recycle and compost facility with a kitchen scrap digestor, that is able to produce biogas, offering an alternative energy supply to keep the kitchen incubator active during climatological threats.

The sustainability of the master dissertation project has been tackling the various pillars of the sustainability matrix. On social level this project offers the possibility to stimulate the interaction between the residents by using food as an activator to strengthen the sense of the common good and elaborating the social cohesiveness of the area. On economical level, this project is able to offer new local jobs and business opportunities. Increasing the commercial activity, stimulating local entrepreneurs within their own neighbourhood, regardless of educational attainment, financial background, work history and past social barriers. On environmental level, this project is able to create and activate an ecological and healthy food system within an area that has difficulties with its current food network, by growing and processing their own products, they are able to be self-sufficient. And last but not least on cultural level this project is able to connect the wide variety of cultural backgrounds of the residents of the Creek area by food. By sharing their personal cultural backgrounds and habits with each other, they have the possibility to strenghten the community feel between the various on site actors by sharing something universal as food and eating, a primary need. Extending their personal knowledge, creating a new healthy mindset and changing the current approach towards fast food and take-away.