At last week’s New York City Council Parks Committee, dozens of residents and advocates, including Director of Community Planning and Design Moses Gates, called on the city to expand access to a number of sites owned by the NYC Parks Department that are currently inaccessible to the public. These ranged from landmarks like Washington Square Arch, to dozens of buildings and small parks throughout the outer borough neighborhoods. So many people came to testify on the issue that the hearing had to be moved from the smaller hearing room into the main council chambers.

“As our city grows significantly over the course of the next few decades – and RPA forecasts that New York City has the potential to reach 9.7 million people by 2040 – we need more infrastructure to meet that growth,” said Gates. In addition to adding capacity for subways and schools, he argued that expanding the places where residents can explore the city and its architectural and historic treasures is an important way of adding to our vital urban infrastructure.

And luckily, many of those places are already owned by the city, including the Washington Square Arch, and entire islands like Hart and North Brother Islands. ​“Just as a transportation planner will tell you that the easiest and most efficient way to add more access is to use existing and underutilized rights-of-way, the easiest and most efficient way to add to the public inventory of New York City is simply to open up places that the public already owns,” said Gates.

Read the full testimony here: Expanding Public Access to NYC Parks Sites