MANHATTAN — The city is looking for a few green ideas.
The city has launched the Change by Us NYC campaign, a program to spark eco-friendly and sustainable initiatives with the help of city agencies and community-based organizations.
"New Yorkers have long been active in greening our City and improving our quality of life, and thanks to this new website, volunteers, professionals, and City agencies will have the opportunity to collaborate on issues like sustainability like never before," Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith said in a statement.
The initiative is backed by the New York-based firm Local Projects, the group behind StoryCorps and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and the Citizens Committee of New York City, which reportedly has upwards of $20,000 of grant money up for grabs for gardening, parks, and composting.
"Citizens Committee for New York City is very excited to partner with the City of New York on Change by Us NYC,” Peter Kostmayer, CEO of Citizens Committee for New York City, said in a statement.
"Volunteer-led community groups all over the city will be able to apply to us for a grant and project-planning assistance and take the first step to improving the environmental quality of life of their neighborhoods."
Since launching on Thursday, the site has generated more than 778 ideas, 118 project ideas city-wide, and 96 resources. Manhattan has 2 projects and 27 ideas.
There are three types of contributions on the site. Ideas can be posted anonymously, and can be a suggestion, idea, or complaint. Projects are an idea for action to be taken, and users can suggest resources for people with ideas to go to accomplish them.
In Manhattan, user Ian D. suggested the idea of making Central Park car-free, and another idea pitched by Dato M. was for an community map and associated apps that link Washington Heights/Inwood and Harlem.
Some of the ideas on the site included expanding “Summer Streets” to every weekend during the summer, finishing the Second Avenue Subway, and removing bike lanes.
Rather than be a clearinghouse for ideas for what the city can do, ideas submitted to the site will be "a social network for grassroots leaders," said Goldsmith.
"Change by Us NYC enables New Yorkers across the city to become stewards of their own local communities, and team up with the city government and other neighbors to make good things happen," stated David Bragdon, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability in the news release.
