Why is it, then, that developing the waterfront continues to have a forced, reluctant quality, as if New Yorkers were trying to talk themselves into root canal? Are there unconscious resistances at work, which may need to be examined? There is, first of all, this particular city's historic habit of turning inland It has often been remarked that, unlike most great cities on water, which tease and flirt with their liquid edges in a thousand subtle, sensuous ways, New York has failed to maximize its aqueous setting. This underutilization of the waterfront is mentioned as a curious negligence, as if it just happened to have slipped the locals' minds. Actually, the main reason why this shoreline resource remained so long "untapped" is that it had been already allocated for maritime and industrial uses. These functions may not have provided the best urban design, public space, or environmental protection, but they were a huge economic motor driving the region's economy. So the present opportunity, bear in mind, stems from a vacuum left by the port's demise and relocation elsewhere. Shabby and makeshift though much of the old working port may have been, its vitality issued from the way that purpose had dictated its construction. As more boats came in, as more docks were needed, they got built; warehouses were erected to hold the goods loaded off the ships; customs offices, shipping agents, chandlers and ropemakers, retailers of barrels and packing cases, brothels and seamen's churches, taverns and boardinghouses and union halls, all sprang up around the docks. Nothing can replace the beautiful, urgent logic of felt need. When it is met in an adhoc, accreted manner, urbanists speak glowingly of "organic" city growth. I put "organic" in quotation marks because I don't believe any large human endeavor such as constructing a metropolis can ever be spontaneous or unplanned-the term "organic" tends to cloak a good deal of maneuvering by powerful special interests, such as the shipping lobby; so let us say, then, "additive" or "incremental" instead of "organic," to connote the lotbylot assemblage of a classic New York streetscape. Now that the old port is gone, and the river's edge sits dormant, waterfront recycling makes a certain sense ("We've got all this valuable river view property close to the center of town, we got a populace starved for public access to water, we might as well do something about it"). But that reasoning still has a slightly abstract air, lacking as it does the keen urgency that commandeered the old port's growth. And that lack produces an ace call it the ache of the arbitrary: we wish we could feel driven to redevelop the waterfront because the city's very life depended on it. Instead we are faced with more tepid drives: the profit motive of real estate developers (but they can make money elsewhere), and the altruistic motive of community advocates for parks and a cleaner, greener environment.