No longer just for coastal areas, WEDG 3.0 adds inland waterfronts to its certification.

By Clare Jacobson

In October 2023, the New York–based nonprofit Waterfront Alliance launched version 3.0 of its Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines (WEDG) and revised its WEDG Professionals Course, which the group describes as “tools for sites building resilience, ecology, and access at the water’s edge.” WEDG was updated in part to maintain best practices and to surpass regulatory codes, says Joseph Sutkowi, the chief waterfront design officer at the Waterfront Alliance. He notes changes to benchmarks for community engagement, long-term maintenance planning, and protection for flooding beyond a site’s property line.

The most noteworthy update to WEDG is its inclusion of lake and river environments. Version 1.0, released in 2015, applied only to the New York and New Jersey harbor; version 2.0 was launched in 2019 for coastal sites across the United States. Version 3.0, Sutkowi says, was developed in response to overt demand. “We had conversations with folks in inland cities—Nashville, Muskegon, Detroit, Toronto—about the idea of expanding into freshwater systems,” he says. “And when we started to look into the applicability of the standard, we saw that there was more overlap than we expected.”

Elvis Wong, an associate at SWA’s Laguna Beach office, also sees this overlap. He says that while East Coast waterfront projects—the work WEDG initially addressed—are often large-scale brownfield developments, his office on the West Coast typically shapes greenfield projects on suburban scales. “Regardless of the types of work,” he says, “the requirements for things like designing for flood elevation, designing for community access, and creating adaptive management plans are things that we’re seeing throughout California.” Since 3.0 was released, SWA Laguna Beach has started to plan out projects to submit for WEDG verification.

Expanding from New York to California and all points in between is part of the Waterfront Alliance’s plan. “The goal is that WEDG is on all waterfronts everywhere in the U.S.,” Sutkowi says. “That’s an awfully lofty goal for a small team.” To help grow the program, the group concentrates on a few target cities where it has made inroads and employs “WEDG associates”—people who have taken the WEDG Professionals Course—as advocates. Wong is one such advocate.

Tom Klein, ASLA, a project manager at Wenk Associates, is another. Klein previously worked in New York City and brought WEDG with him to his Denver-based firm. “I was excited when I heard that WEDG was going to expand to the noncoast realm,” he says. “As a proud midwesterner, I think that it’s a prescient tool for us to use.”

Klein notes that WEDG’s focus on waterfront design has helped it find a space within landscape architecture. Whereas larger certification programs cannot go into detail on subjects such as at-risk species, plant habitats, and ecology, WEDG does. “For me, it exposes an opportunity for other niche frameworks for verification,” Klein says. “And I wonder if there’s something to the idea of trying to stay small and nimble and be a little bit more qualitative.”