Greening the South Bronx

Grassroots organizations in the South Bronx have made environmental justice a central part of their agenda for community revitalization. The Pratt Center has been there with them from the beginning, providing mapping, architecture and urban planning resources that have allowed neighborhood organizations to build a greener, healthier environment in neighborhoods that have carried more than their fair share of the city's polluting facilities. Sewage treatment plants, waste transfer stations, truck highways, wholesale markets, power plants, gas and oil depots—the South Bronx hosts essential infrastructure that allows the New York City region to function but that also leaves the surrounding neighborhoods with New York City's highest asthma rates and a diminished quality of life.

Pratt Center has provided technical services to the Bronx River Watershed Alliance and its member groups: the Point CDC, Sustainable South Bronx, Mothers on the Move, and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. The Pratt Center has helped them:

• build a greenway along the Bronx River and reclaim the waterway as a social, economic and ecological asset
• plan and advocate to replace the underutilized Sheridan Expressway with a park
• develop and implement strategies for evaluating, cleaning and reusing industrial brownfields through the state Brownfields Opportunity Area grant program
• make sure the redevelopment of the Oak Park railyard produces good jobs and a cleaner environment, and
• turn an abandoned cement plant into a public park.
   

More on Pratt Center's South Bronx environmental work

• Transforming the Southern Bronx River Watershed
• From Streetfilms: Building Greenways and Community in the Bronx

Our Partners

• Bronx River Alliance
• Mothers on the Move
• The Point CDC
• Sustainable South Bronx
• Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice

Related Resources

• South Bronx Greenway Master Plan