One of the nuggets included in the Regional Plan Association's Forth Plan, released in late 2017, is a proposal to create a national park out of the New Jersey Meadowlands.
To save jobs and homes numbering in the many thousands, the Regional Plan Association's Forth Plan recommends turning 21,000 acres of the New Jersey Meadowlands into "Climate Change National Park."
The idea hasn't sees as much coverage as some of the other aspects of the long-anticipated plan, but that changed this week with an article for Curbed New York by Karrie Jacobs.
The Fourth Regional Plan aims to cope with rising sea levels by fundamentally rethinking the New Jersey Meadowlands, with its 14 densely populated towns, its thousands of acres of warehouse and distribution facilities, its highways and rail lines, its stadiums and arenas. In a large section on climate change that mostly deals with ideas that are admirable but not very surprising—“modernize the electric grid” or “upgrade infrastructure to high standards of resilience”—there is a section entitled “Establish a national park in the Meadowlands.”
To verify the seriousness of the idea—not to mention the need for the idea—Jacobs speaks with Robert Freudenberg, vice president of energy and environmental programs for the RPA, as well as Adrian Benepe, senior vice president at the Trust for Public Land and former New York City parks commissioner.
FULL STORY: What if New Jersey’s Meadowlands were a national park?
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