By Jordan Cosby and Laura Muñoz
As part of a 3-part series, Public Works Partners is exploring how urban planners can reconnect communities with New York City’s waterfront for equity and resilience. In Part 1, we laid out the harmful history and how careless infrastructure left marginalized communities vulnerable to climate change-related events and pollution. Drawing on lessons from past waterfront revitalization, the next step is to explore actionable strategies that reconnect neighborhoods to the city’s waterways in methods that advance equity, resilience, and inclusion.
How to Reconnect New Yorkers to the Waterfront for Equity and Resilience
1. Improve Physical Access
For many New Yorkers, the waterfront remains physically inaccessible. Approaches to restore their access include:
- Redevelop Formerly Industrial Zones into Public Spaces: Many of NYC’s industrial waterfronts are underutilized and polluted. Converting these areas into parks and greenways can revitalize neighborhoods and provide critical open space. The Harlem River Greenway project in the Bronx exemplifies this approach by transforming a formerly industrial and inaccessible shoreline into a continuous public greenway. Public Works Partners has played a pivotal role by leading the community engagement process, ensuring that local residents’ voices shape the design and function of the greenway. Once implemented, the project will deliver safer bike and pedestrian pathways that connect communities to key destinations and reclaim access to the waterfront, strengthening residents’ daily connection to the riverfront.
- Re-Activate Freight Transportation and Waterfront Ports: Expanding freight movement via waterways reduces truck traffic, cuts air pollution, and improves public health. The city’s Blue Highways initiative is advancing this strategy by developing a new waterside freight facility at the Fulton Fish Market in Hunts Point, expected to remove at least 1,000 trucks per month from local roads. Public Works Partners is contributing to this broader effort through The Bronx is Breathing project, establishing the city’s first freight-specific electric vehicle charging hub at Hunts Point, electrifying one of NYC’s largest freight transportation centers. By redeveloping a former brownfield site, the project will not only reduce diesel emissions and improve air quality in a community burdened by some of the city’s highest asthma rates, but also create green jobs and expand economic opportunities for local residents.
- Expand Transit Connectivity: In a city where most residents use public transportation to get around, one of the best ways to connect people to the waterfront is to ensure reliable public routes that take them to the coastline. Possible ideas to expand transit connectivity are adding ferry stops in underserved neighborhoods such as Soundview and Coney Island, and improving last-mile connections (bike lanes, shuttle buses, pedestrian bridges) to existing waterfront areas.
2. Build Equitable Resilience Infrastructure
Building lifelong solutions to infrastructure ensures the long-term impact of bringing marginalized communities closer to the water. This approach would allow residents to gain access to the waterfront and also shield them from the effects of climate change. Possible ideas include:
- Invest in nature-based solutions such as oyster reefs and rain gardens: These new systems would be especially important for lower-income waterfront communities that have not received an equitable share of infrastructure of this kind before. The South Bronx is one of the neighborhoods where this idea is already being implemented, with rain gardens being built to manage stormwater and enhance community spaces.
- Expand Major Resilience Projects to Underserved Areas: New York has made great advances in resiliency infrastructure. The East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, a coastal protection initiative that provides Lower Manhattan with vital protection from storm surges, creates new community spaces such as dog runs and baseball fields. However, projects like this need to be expanded to more lower-income neighborhoods, prioritizing historically underserved communities.
3. Include the Community in Waterfront Development
The best way to ensure that the benefits from these new developments are equitably shared is to include the neighboring communities they will serve. Reconnecting New Yorkers to the waterfront could rebuild cultural, ecological, and economic ties that have been lost to time. Without intentional policies, new waterfront projects could lead to gentrification and displacement. Strategies to avoid this risk include:
- Prioritize community-led design processes that give voice to local needs in shaping public spaces (e.g., through participatory budgeting or partnerships with CBOs). The Bronx is Breathing project illustrates how genuine community leadership can shape waterfront revitalization that meets the needs of marginalized neighborhoods. Public Works Partners collaborated with The Point Community Development Corporation, Greater Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation, and a steering committee of local stakeholders—including local community-based organizations, business leaders, health professionals, and truck drivers—to develop core community requirements. Informed by extensive engagement, these priorities include local hiring and workforce development, vendor recruitment focused on South Bronx enterprises, community-owned clean energy projects, and improved access to micro-mobility options. By centering local voices in design and implementation, the project fosters equitable and resilient improvements in a historically underserved area.
- Partner with local nonprofits and fund waterfront-based environmental education and job training: Building strong partnerships with community organizations is essential to creating meaningful workforce pathways tied to waterfront revitalization. An example of this is the Billion Oyster Project, which engaged Public Works Partners to develop a career bridge program connecting local youth to welding and green job opportunities related to waterfront restoration. By strengthening partnerships with community groups, this initiative advances inclusive economic opportunities alongside environmental renewal and resilience in marginalized neighborhoods.
- Highlight Indigenous and BIPOC histories of waterfront lands. Promoting Indigenous and BIPOC histories along New York City’s waterfront is a powerful way to reconnect people to place. Interventions like signage, storytelling, and land acknowledgments can help people feel more connected to the water and foster a deeper understanding of its cultural and historical importance. One example is the interpretive signage at Bruce Beach in Pensacola, Florida, which uses public art and narrative to honor the legacy of the beach. Initiatives like this show how even a small storytelling project can inspire a stronger sense of stewardship for the waterways.
Public Works Partners developed a framework to empower communities through acknowledging historical harms and forging paths forward to advancing equity and healing. In Part 3, we walk through our process of dismantling complicated, interconnected, and large-scale injustice, and apply our approach to healing the harbor.
Stay tuned!
