Imagine Flatbush 2030

Sustainable Flatbush serves on the Advisory Committee of Imagine Flatbush 2030, a co-initiative of the Flatbush Development Corporation and the Municipal Art Society Planning Center.

Imagine Flatbush 2030 bridges the gap between PlaNYC’s sustainability goals and consensus-driven community-based planning. Residents, business owners, youth, community leaders, social service providers, and clergy in Flatbush met over the course of a year to hammer out a neighborhood sustainability and livability agenda, and tools to measure progress toward consensus-based goals.

More than 300 people participated in four separate workshops to identify and prioritize a diverse range of issues and goals that participants saw as important to maintaining a sustainable neighborhood. Sustainable Flatbush’s role on the Advisory Committee helped shape the process, organize the agenda, and connect the results to our other initiatives. By being a direct participant, as well as a workshop facilitator, we were able to raise awareness of our organization, plus get more people involved in our work.

Over the course of the summer and early fall, these issues have been broken down, and shaped into an agenda for local action. The agenda is really a collection of targeted opportunities to make progress on local sustainability, in addition to identifying ways to measure progress. The action agenda is designed to assist Flatbush residents work effectively with local groups, elected officials, and city agencies to make progress toward community development goals. Here’s a sampling of what’s in it:

  1. Developing leadership among business owners;
  2. Making sure that land use applications for new development are compatible with sustainability goals;
  3. Creating a central source of information on all training and programming opportunities that serve local youth;
  4. Creating design guidelines that promote harmony between old and new buildings.

To make it simple to view and use the Imagine Flatbush 2030 resources, the MAS Planning Center has created an online application (or widget) with links to several documents and timely information about progress toward implementing the Imagine Flatbush 2030 Sustainability Agenda. Please explore this new tool — feedback is most welcome. We encourage you to use it, circulate it, and certainly consider incorporating it into your own website, blog, or future posts about Flatbush; but please contact the MAS Planning Center first for detailed instructions at jcosorio@mas.org or at 212-935-3960 (ext.254.) And of course, you can get information about becoming more involved anytime by signing up via our “Participate Form” or contacting the Flatbush Development Corporation.