Bloomberg's green dream is giving developers chance to shore up plans.

Just as real estate is valued by the quality of its street-level frontage and streetscape along the building's perimeter, waterfront property is similarly valued by the face it presents to the river, canal or bay.

With the mayor announcing a forward-looking agenda for the city in the year 2030, the elements of his proposals that present the greatest opportunity for the city are those which will reshape how we view and use our waterways.

In a city constrained by a lack of available land, the waterways emerge as a huge area of opportunity for growth. And the value of this development can be more readily realized if each development maximizes not just views of the water, but the use of the water. Two aspects of the mayor's plan which deserve specific attention are ferry transit and recreational boating.

Water travel can save a lot of time. According to an analysis commissioned by the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, commuters traveling between Yonkers and Downtown are saving as much as 21 minutes on each leg of their commute. Ask yourself, how much is 42 additional minutes each day worth to you? New developments around the edges in the Rockaways and along Staten Island's south shore offer opportunities for major time savings. If new service can be brought to developed areas on the waterfront, time can be saved.

To be competitive with public transit, ferry service needs the same level of public support. Today's mass transit is provided by subway cars, buses, and trains that are all largely paid for by government agencies. For the 20 years that ferry operators have been trying to grow their businesses, the only public support provided to this industry has been a small number of piers. Imagine a subway network where only the stations are built and a private operator would have to buy the cars, hire the labor force, and operate the system out of their own pocket? It wouldn't get us very far.

One way the mayor's plan can support growth of water transit is to allow ferry operators to purchase low-and ultra-low sulfur diesel at subsidized rates, as many school bus operators already do. Not only will this help existing operators expand their areas of service, but it will help to improve air quality and therefore help combat global warming.

Expanding water transit is not reliant simply on bringing in more funding, but on integrating the network of boats with buses and subways. Of the nearly 20 active ferry landings in the city today, only three are served directly by MTA buses, and only two have subway service. To make the ferry system work, every landing would need to be served by a bus whose schedule is coordinated with arriving and departing boats.

Every waterfront site has different characteristics. For instance, the main channel of the East River flows closer to Manhattan and therefore the water closer to Manhattan is much deeper, generally speaking, than the water fronting Brooklyn and Queens. While Manhattan has only seven official East River water access points--defined as marinas, boat launches and ferry landings along the eight miles of the East River south of 96th Street-Brooklyn and Queens offer much greater potential for these activities.

The single most limiting factor in determining water use is the design of the edge. Too often, waterfront developers look at edges solely as engineering issues. That is, how to keep the land from falling into the water. Instead, edges should be designed to maximize their potential water use whether immediately or simply to keep the options open in the future.

Perhaps the most imaginative aspect of the mayor's plan is to open up 90% of the city's waterways for recreational use.

With so much development either proposed or in progress, waterfront developers should seize this unique opportunity not just to look at the water, but to make the best use of it.

Carter Craft is director of programming and operations for the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.