Building on decades of city, state, and federal planning efforts, the Gowanus Lowlands is a community-based vision for a restored public realm centered around the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn—a federal Superfund site and former marshland in a neighborhood recently rezoned to bring over 8,500 affordable and market-rate residential units to address NYC’s housing crisis.

Anticipating a neighborhood in transition, a local stewardship group commissioned the Gowanus Lowlands as an action plan for positive change. Through extensive engagement and proactive design, the plan transforms the industrial waterfront into an ecologically and culturally rich area. It coordinates the disparate actions of separate landowners into a cohesive waterfront park built over time, while addressing community concerns of contamination, combined sewage overflow (CSO), and degraded air/water quality. Extensive collaboration with NYC Planning ensured the 2021 rezoning incentivized features of the plan, including floodable landscapes, waterfront access, and community programming.

The plan has directly informed the design of dozens of sites along the canal (by many firms), including the design and implementation of three new waterfronts open to the public (by the submitting firm), introducing a new generation of water-based public space in NYC.