Physically, no area of New York City has changed as dramatically as the shoreline, thanks to natural processes, landfill, dredging, and other interventions. Only by considering the waterfront's past can we account for New York's current, perplexing relationship to its future. I WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY to write a traditional history of New York's waterfront, had I a historian's training, twenty years' leisure, and an independent income, but this book is not it. It is, however, saturated with history. Everywhere. I walked on the waterfront, I saw the present as a layered accumulation of older narratives. I tried to read the city like a text. One textual layer was the past, going back to, well, the Ice Age; another layer was the present-whatever or whoever was popping up in my view at the moment; another layer contained the built environment, that is to say the architecture or piers or parks currently along the shore; another layer still was my personal history, the memories thrown up by visiting this or that spot; yet another layer consisted of the cultural record-the literature or films or other artwork that threw a reflecting light on the matter at hand; and finally there was the invisible or imagined layer-what I thought should be on the waterfront but wasn't. At any one point I would give myself the freedom to be drawn to this or that layer, in combination or alone. Throughout, I walked the waterfront. The notion of one marathon cir cumambulation quickly gave way to a multitude of smaller walks in all seasons: when my legs got tired, or my head grew dizzy from absorbing impressions, I stopped for the day. In the end, I not only explored by foot the island's perimeter (including several stretches that seemed dicey or were closed to the public), I often revisited an area, reconnoitering the same ground until it spoke to me. Sometimes I brought along friends, who lightened my quest for the waterfront's soul. I made longoverdue pilgrimages to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the United Nations, and Gracie Mansion, all of which, as a native New Yorker, I had previously ignored. I also interviewed experts, and sampled the mixed pleasures of community board meetings and public hearings. All along, I kept coming up against certain underlying questions: What is our capacity for citymaking at this historical juncture? How did we formerly build cities with such casual conviction, and can we still come up with bold, integrated visions and ambitious works? What is the changing meaning of public space? How to resolve the antiurban bias in our national character with the need to sustain a vital city environment? Or reconcile New York's past as a port center, with the new model of a postindustrial city given over to information processing and consumerism? No one book can tackle all such questions fully, much less respond to every inch of the waterfront, past and present. Gaps are unavoidable.