When the sun comes out, New Yorkers flock to the city’s piers. They bring picnic blankets and coolers, sunscreen and speakers, to places where decades ago longshoremen unloaded goods from cargo ships.

New York has changed since then, and so too have its piers.

The city was once a major industrial center, producing everything from Pepsi-Cola to World War II munitions. The waterfront brought those goods to the world, and New York’s piers buzzed with the loading and unloading of ships.

But the decline of manufacturing left the piers derelict and unused, both a symbol and a symptom of the city’s changing fortunes. They were often rife with crime and drug use at a time when both ills brought New York to the edge of ruin.

That began to change in the 1990s, after a sharp drop in crime, an economic boom and the city’s shift to a knowledge-based economy. New York started to reimagine the waterfront as a common good and many piers have been transformed into well-kept public backyards.

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Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City teems with life on a sunny day.

Dance troupes practice their kicks and twirls. Children run from tree to tree, their exhausted parents not far behind. Young lovers seek solitude at the end of the piers, to either make out or break up.