Image Credit: Department of Environmental Protection

The Coney Island initiative recruits’ volunteers to assist in the effort to help protect New York City’s Waterways. On April 22, 2021, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Vincent Sapienza launched the new Harbor Protectors Initiative to clean up Coney Island. The program aims to recruit volunteers to assist in the cleanup of Coney Island through various methods. (more…)

Mayor Bill de Blasio, DSNY Commissioner Edward Grayson and Director Ben Furnas of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability pose with a compost collection bin following the return of the Curbside Composting Program. Image Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.

The new version of the Curbside Composting service will make free composting services available to New Yorkers and the improved Program includes significant expansions. On April 22, 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will be resuming its Curbside Composting Program, which was originally halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Earth Day announcement also included significant expansions to community composting, reuse, and hazardous waste disposal programs operated by the Department of Sanitation. (more…)

Press Conference at the Central Park Mall. Image credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.

Central Park has not been car-free for over a century, but things will change come summer. On April 20, 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Central Park will become completely car-free. The announcement came right before Earth Day 2018. Starting this June, the iconic greenspace’s Center Drive, Terrace Drive, East Drive, and West Drive will be permanently closed to cars. These closings follow the closure of Prospect Park’s entire loop drive in January. CityLand previously covered Prospect Park’s closings here. (more…)

Providing air conditioning units to low-income families and seniors is one of the strategies the City is enacting to help New Yorkers cope with summer heat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image Credit: CityLand

As temperatures begin to rise and as Summer in NYC officially begins on Saturday, the City is eyeing sports and other large venues to use as cooling centers and is set to spend $55 million on air conditioners for elderly and low-income residents. On June 12, 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced an update to the City’s plan to protect vulnerable New Yorkers from excessive indoor heat exposure. Now called the Get Cool NYC program, the update follows an announcement of the Covid-19 Heat Wave Plan on May 15, 2020, to outline how the City will keep New Yorkers cool during the coming summer months in the wake of Covid-19 shelter-in-place and social distancing requirements.  (more…)

Storage jar found in Seneca Village, part of the Seneca Village Unearthed online exhibit. Image Credit: LPC

The exhibited artifacts will help establish what life was really like for middle-class African American families in Seneca Village. On February 20, 2020, Landmarks Preservation Commission announced the launch of Seneca Village Unearthed, an online exhibit and collection of nearly three hundred artifacts from Seneca Village.  Seneca Village, formerly located in what is now Central Park, was once New York City’s largest community of free African American landowners in the mid-nineteenth century. The village was founded in the 1820s in what was then a rural area north of the city’s center located today between 82nd and 89th Street and Central Park West and the Great Lawn. (more…)