CivicCon: Gena Wirth believes waterfronts should protect our structures, people & wildlife

Hurricane Sandy claimed nearly 160 lives, caused $65 billion in damage and destroyed or damaged approximately 650,000 homes.

In the aftermath of the superstorm, New Yorkers were left asking not only how they would recover from the storm, but also how they would prepare for similar storms in the future.

Gena Wirth and her colleagues at the landscape architecture firm SCAPE were among the groups that worked to answer that question, and they arrived at the conclusion that our country's waterfronts — not just in New York, but everywhere —  should fulfill three duties: reducing risk of future damage, improving the shoreline's ecological resilience and doing both duties without sacrificing the public's access to the water.

More about Gena Wirth:CivicCon: Pensacola's waterfront is beautiful. But is it resilient?

So speaking to a crowd of hundreds Monday night at CivicCon, Wirth posed the question, "How do we use the (waterfront) to reduce risk and to improve quality of life for humans and non-humans?"

During a CivicCon presentation at the REX Theatre, Wirth highlighted several of SCAPE's waterfront resiliency projects from around the country. 

Town Branch Commons, an effort in Lexington, Kentucky, is using landscaping to draw out and to revitalize a creek that was buried under urban infrastructure.

At the Gowanus Lowlands in New York, private citizens, government, business owners and architects united in a grassroots effort to revitalize public space and use along a polluted waterfront.

Wirth was also the project manager for SCAPE’s involvement in New York's "Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency," a coastal protection plan in New York to help prepare for future superstorms in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Wirth stressed that "there's no silver bullet, you can't just take an idea and apply it everywhere." 

She noted that every community needs to find its own unique solutions, but she noted one of Pensacola's strengths is that there is already a level of commitment many places don't have.

"It's impressive how many people love the Pensacola waterfront," Wirth said. "I think that's one of the most exciting assets that a community can have, is a group of dedicated people that already love the space and want to see positive change."

Wirth noted that one of the reasons many of our waterfronts aren't resilient enough is because designers didn't give much thought to how our waterfronts interact with the existing ecology.

She noted it was impossible to fix everything at once, so the best approach is to take it one piece at a time with small, manageable chunks that are "symbiotic."

"In many ways, these sort of projects are kind of like a Rubik's Cube, an interconnected series of parts where you have to figure out what are the priority steps ... and figure out how do you slowly build over time," Wirth said.

Wirth and a team from SCAPE will help Pensacola design its own vision for the waterfront Tuesday. Wirth and SCAPE colleagues Chris Barnes and Lee Altman will use local feedback to draft some resiliency measures for the downtown Pensacola waterfront.

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SCAPE will also hold an open-to-the-public design charrette at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Bowden Building, 120 Church St., where citizens can learn about the design, share input and ask questions.

CivicCon's next presenter will be city planner and urban designer Jeff Speck, one of the world's foremost experts and advocates regarding walkable cities. 

CivicCon is a partnership between the News Journal and the Studer Community Institute to foster civic conversations and share ideas that can make our community a better place to live, grow, work and invest.

More information about Wirth — as well as past CivicCon stories, presentations and podcasts — is available by visit pnj.com/civiccon.

Kevin Robinson can be reached at 850-435-8527 or krobinson4@pnj.com.