Shore Things

DON’T LET ANYONE tell you that Little Island isn’t a great place to meet French tourists. Now in its fourth year of operation, the mediagenic pier garden on Manhattan’s West Side, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects principal Signe Nielsen, has settled into its place among New York’s ponderous attractions. Three minutes down the quay, opposite the Whitney Museum of American Art, sits the even newer Gansevoort Peninsula by Field Operations. These two parks, representing about eight acres of land, cost something like $330 million. By way of comparison, the United States recently authorized Taiwan’s purchase of a fleet of ALTIUS-600M-V suicide drones, intended to “turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape” in case of Chinese attack, for $300 million. Considering this cheaper alternative to waterfront development raises some obvious questions about these new investments on the Hudson River. Why did they make this pair of parks? (To stoke speculative development.) Why did they put them right next to each other? (No real reason.)…