Parks, esplanades and other publicly-accessible spaces on the waterfront  provide opportunities for waterfront recreation, sight-seeing, events and other activities that allow visitors and residents alike to experience New York City as a waterfront city.  New public and private investments, as well as effective waterfront zoning regulations, have succeeded in making a significant amount of the waterfront available for public use. There are approximately 200 linear miles of shorefront public parks or spaces on private property, with over 20 linear miles of publicly accessible shorefront spaces in progress or planned on public property. 

As part of the work of Vision 2020: New York City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, the Department of City Planning has created this interactive map to identify and give information about the city’s inventory of publicly-accessible waterfront spaces. Select a borough from the citywide map, and then choose a waterfront site to get a description about that space.  Photos are provided for privately owned sites along with a list of features and amenities such as  walkways, seating, trees, and lighting. There is a link to the NYCityMap to see the general location and adjacent streets. For publicly accessible waterfront sites on public property, there is a link to another agency’s website which provides a description and a map of the space.

The interactive map includes 197 publicly accessible waterfront sites that are constructed. Another 27 are in progress or planned for public property.  Of the total number of sites, 28 are on private property and 196 are public property.

The GIS shapefiles used to create this interactive map, as well as a database with more detailed information about publicly accessible waterfront spaces on private property, are available
for download here.