Rewiring the City
by NICK JURAVICH with photographs by BLAINE DAVIS
Stepping off the 6 train at Brook Avenue, I emerge into the heart of the South Bronx. To the south, the nine towers of the Mill Brook Houses rise 16 stories above the Deegan and Bruckner Expressways, a quintessential Robert Moses landscape, while to the north, Brook Avenue stretches away through a masonry canyon of five-story apartment blocks with grocery stores, salons, and fast food joints at street level.
The neighborhood is one of the most densely populated areas in the United States, and its reputation precedes it; this is what people are alluding to when they talk about the “inner city.” There’s nary a natural feature in sight.
Three blocks north, I’m standing at the edge of a muddy depression in what remains of an asphalt play lot while Aaron Petersohn conjures up a wholly different scene: a babbling brook alive with fish, frogs, and salamanders, shaded by native trees whose branches ring with birdsong. It is not a sweet reminiscence, though we are standing where a stream once ran, but a vision for the future. Mr. Petersohn is the project director for the Brook Restoration Project at Brook Park, an ambitious plan to “daylight” a portion of a long-buried waterway and create a verdant wetland in the heart of the South Bronx.
