Brooklyn stakeholder groups announce community vision for the Brooklyn Strand
A coalition of more than 40 local Brooklyn community groups on Friday announced a new vision for the Brooklyn Strand, the nearly 50 acres of public space and city-owned land that connects Downtown Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Bridge and the surrounding neighborhoods.
The vision — a community-driven response to Mayor de Blasio’s call for a plan to reinvent the area — lays out a comprehensive series of recommendations to the city for how to transform the quality of these public spaces, better connect people in surrounding neighborhoods, and make the waterfront more accessible between Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“By design the Brooklyn Strand plan is an opportunity to adapt 1950s-era infrastructure into a new vision for true connectivity and accessibility between downtown Brooklyn, its neighborhoods and the waterfront,” says Claire Weisz, FAIA, architect and urbanist who co-founded WXY architecture + urban design. “The Brooklyn Strand plan transforms leftover spaces from expressway plans that cut off neighborhoods, turning them into into public spaces that connect people.”