Maciej Ceglowski recently paddled the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and something he said at the end struck me:

I have been puzzled since moving here by the strange relationship New Yorkers have with their waterfront. You would hardly think this is an island city. For every enjoyable stretch of coastline like Pelham Bay, Coney Island, or the East Village, there are a dozen miles of waterfront that are fenced off and abandoned (Greenpoint), blocked by highways (much of Manhattan and Brooklyn) or gratuitously kept out of reach by landscaping that ignores the water altogether (Red Hook, Battery Park City). It would be one thing if the waterfront were packed with high-end developed properties – at least then the inaccessibility would make some kind of evil sense. But most of the Brooklyn riverfront consists of rusty, fenced-off industrial space, left over from an earlier era and never reclaimed.

It’s something that surprised me when I first visited Manhattan. Only when I was in Battery Park did I feel like I was on an island. [Mind you, I wasn't in the City for long.] But as I think about NYC in contrast to the A1A route down Florida’s Space Coast, it’s a bit staggering.