Public Engagement

The Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR) conducted ongoing briefings with nearly 70 elected officials, 19 community boards, and 300 business, civic, community-based, environmental advocacy, faith, labor/trade, policy, planning, professional, and press organziations around the city.These briefings garnered valuable feedback from the leaders on the ground representing their communities.

In the spring of 2013, more than 1,000 New Yorkers were directly briefed about SIRR and many more have been briefed since. This includes residents from areas impacted by Sandy who participated in a series of 11 public workshops to give direct feedback in a small group setting.

11 public workshops were conducted within the five areas of New York City that had the most lingering physical damage from Sandy. Click on the links below to read more about each workshop:

March 6 – South Shore Staten Island Workshop

March 7 – Brooklyn Waterfront Workshop 

March 12 – South Shore Staten Island Workshop

March 13 – Gerritsen Beach – Sheepshead Bay – Canarsie Workshop 

March 14 – Old and New Howard Beach – W. Hamilton Beach – Broad Channel Workshop

March 14 – Northern Brooklyn/Queens Waterfront 

March 18 – Far Rockaway Workshop

March 19 – Coney Island – Brighton Beach – Manhattan Beach – Sea Gate Workshop 

March 19 – Southern Manhattan Workshop

April 24 – Sunset Park Public Workshop 

Workshop Facilitator Note Review by NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate Matthew Breeden and Katherine Pozycki, students of NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate, reviewed the facilitator notes from 10 of the public workshops in order to summarize the feedback and distill it into trends along four categories for each impacted area: community assets, community vulnerabilities, top rebuilding priorities, and other feedback. Download the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate presentation.  

If you would like to give us feedback about rebuilding New York City and making it more resilient to future storms and climate change, please contact us online.