2026 Theses Master's

Push to Open: New York's Open Streets, the Open City and Community Power

Carl, Anna

Transforming streetscapes into pedestrian-friendly public spaces began as informal and temporary reimagining initiatives by communities, commonly referred to as temporary and tactical urbanism (Andres, 2025; Lydon and Garcia, 2015). In recent years, planning organizations started to use these methods to quickly address public space inequities, departing from the traditionally slow planning process. Many street projects now also incorporate community engagement to be more democratic in their processes. Yet, it’s uncertain whether institutional, "top-down" adaptations of informal, "bottom-up" practices actually open the city up to people, or if they merely reproduce symbolic forms of involvement without demonstrably shifting power.

This thesis explores how Sherry Arnstein's "Ladder of Participation" and the "Open City,” as discussed by Richard Sennett (among others), are implemented (often imperfectly) in New York’s Open Streets program. What began as a crisis-driven repurposing of streets has itself been repurposed into a participatory initiative to transform streets into public space for recreation and, more broadly, community building.

At the core of these changes is the question of who is involved in planning, who isn’t, and who’s pushing to change these dynamics. By analyzing the Open Streets program through the lens of Open City and the Ladder of Participation, we can begin to uncover how power, participation and social values have shaped the process and outcomes of one of the city's key programs for streetscape transformation.