The Department of City Planning is currently preparing a Comprehensive Plan for the over 500 miles of New York City’s waterfront, defined as New York Harbor and its tributaries, creeks and bays. Vision 2020 will build on the original Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, published in 1992, and the city’s experience over the past 18 years in order to set forth a new long range vision for a 21st Century NYC waterfront.
Specifically, Vision 2020 will identify key opportunities for improving our waterfront and outline strategies to realize this new vision. The City’s original Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, published by the Department of City Planning in 1992, established a framework for the citywide reclamation of the waterfront, guiding land use decisions along New York City’s shoreline for the last 18 years. The plan recognized the diversity of the waterfront and the importance of balancing the needs of environmentally sensitive natural areas and the working waterfront with opportunities for public access, open space, housing and commercial activity.
Since 1992 and as a result of the original Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, New York City has made great progress in redefining our waterfront as a critical asset, understanding the sense of place it can create, and reconnecting New Yorkers to the water as an additional form of open space. We estimate that since 1992, the city has increased publicly accessible waterfront by approximately 29 miles of shoreline with an additional 13 miles in progress, fundamentally altering the city’s landscape for generations to come. At the same time, we have preserved critical environmental habitats and areas for maritime uses, balancing the many functions the NYC waterfront perform for its residents.
The Department of City Planning is required by local law to complete Vision 2020 by December 31, 2010 and to revise the report every 10 years thereafter to ensure that the city’s waterfront policies are updated.
The process will include significant opportunities for the public to participate in the planning process. The first citywide public meeting is scheduled for April 8, 2010, 6:00 PM- 8:30 PM at Murry Bergtraum High School, 411 Pearl Street, Manhattan.
More information can be found at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/cwp/index.shtml.
