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Now in its 19th year, City of Water Day on 7/25 is a region-wide celebration of our local waterways, spearheaded by Waterfront Alliance and New York–New Jersey Harbor & Estuary Program (HEP). Communities across the five boroughs and around the New York/New Jersey Harbor participate with local events that underscore the importance of resilient and accessible waterfronts.
This year’s theme highlights water as a source of joy and belonging; programming includes free kayaking, clean-ups, music, art-making, panel discussions, and more! (Stay until the end of this post for our City of Water Day events round-up and check out highlights in our latest Public Space Newsletter)
“City of Water Day 2026 celebrates what it means to live with water: being on it, near it, and connected to it. From rivers and bays to creeks and canals, our waterways are central to community life across New York and New Jersey,” says the organizers.
Earlier this year, we opened our 12th open call for new public space project ideas. The theme “Water: Designing an Equitable Water Future for New York City,” was in response to the urgent pressures the city faces to mitigate the effects of too much and too little water, from heavy rainfall pushing the limits of our infrastructure to heat advisories endangering our most vulnerable residents. At the same time, we wanted to celebrate water as not only a threat, but a solution and source of life and play.
“The story of New York City is the story of its water,” said Daphne Lundi, the Water RFP Climate Resilience and Design Fellow and Managing Director of Urban Ocean Lab. “Our 520 miles of shoreline, along with our watershed and sewers, form a vast visible and invisible network that sustains millions of people every day. We interact with water in big ways and small ways, from turning on a faucet to sitting by a pond to swimming in a pool. Climate change is redefining that relationship as flooding and sea level rise continue to challenge the systems we rely on every day. This RFP invites us to honor New York City’s history with water while imagining a future in which water remains a source of connection, culture, and resilience for all New Yorkers.”
We selected five winning projects from a wave of exciting and creative approaches offering how to better live in a city of water. To celebrate City of Water Day, this update highlights the ongoing work of the Water Cohort and shares a progress report on the project incubator progress, as well as features other efforts and events from around the city honoring water this weekend.
As winners of the RFP, the Water Cohort each receives a $10,000 stipend and is currently participating in a nine-month, guided incubator, supported by a network of experts and professionals. Each team will develop their ideas into a final actionable deliverable, which could be a white-paper, a small publication, a website, a policy brief, or other creative product, and present their work at a convening to be planned for 2027. The projects also benefit from collaboration and community with each other in incubator workshops, with expertise spanning across disciplines.
Tiffany Baker of The Dear Neighborhood Project is creating an “NYC Flood Memory Toolkit,” a public-space communication system helping New Yorkers understand citywide flood risks occurring outside traditional mapped flood zones. Kaitlin Krause of Rising Tide Effect is developing a civic design framework, “Water Wise NYC: Designing a Citywide System for Equitable Water Safety,” with place-based interventions to expand water literacy and safety education. Greg Pucillo’s “The Seaweed Zone Project” aims to make it easier for New Yorkers to explore, propose, and obtain permits for community-scale seaweed aquaculture. Gita Nandan & Zehra Kuz of Thread Collective are responding to rising sea levels with “On the Water,” a movement to facilitate, advocate, innovate, and construct floating structures, as an ecological, social and spatial response to climate change. Annabel Finkel of Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners is producing a plan for expanding access to drinking water in public spaces with “Drinking Water in the Public Realm.”
Following a May kick-off meeting, we held our first Water Incubator workshop session in June at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The intention of this first session was “Visioning,” delving into project scoping, power-mapping, and identifying theories of change and project outcomes. The cohort presented their water stories to each other, helping to set collaborative visions for each project’s direction.
Greg taught us about New York’s seaweeds, the ones you can eat, and the species that present opportunities for sustainable building materials, compost, and biochar, asking how can we activate the harbor for not only resilience and adaptation, but innovation?
Tiffany presented the current scattered landscape of flooding resources and hard-to-find information, and offered her roadmap to making water knowledge accessible, understandable, and visible in everyday public space. New Yorkers' social media feeds are inundated with videos of flooded streets and subways. "You saw the whirlpools in the middle of 4th Avenue, that was in front of my bar," one Gowanus business owner shared with Tiffany. How can we better understand what's really happening in NYC neighborhoods and advocate for real solutions?
Annabel asked who has access to a drink of water on a hot day? Extreme heat is NYC’s deadliest climate hazard. Free drinking water is largely limited to parks, but the hottest spaces are often streets, sidewalks, transit corridors, and commercial corridors. NYC already has the water, she told us, potable water infrastructure already exists under every street, we just need a viable pathway to public access.
Kaitlin argued that the city is building for water, not yet designing for how people understand it. NYC has 520 miles of coastline, but has spent $0 on water safety advertising. She imagines a better system: dynamic tide and current markers, flood-line storytelling installations, transit-to-water wayfinding, lightings and installations, a water literacy playbook.
Gita and Zehra showed us the intertidal zone where the ocean meets the land between high and low tides, thinking as far ahead as to 2126 where a new intertidal zone is conceived and floating buildings are normalized as housing. They plan to test design in Jamaica Bay and identify ways to implement policy and programming.
Project teams identified key players and city agencies to make these ideas a reality, resources, and knowledge that currently exists or needs to be developed, and worked together to refine their goals and project activities through the end of this year.
Ahead of the next workshop in September, the five teams are internally developing workplans and research, with support and guidance from the Design Trust team and advisory committee. The second workshop will focus on technical assistance and testing, and the final will focus on advocacy and long-term project communications strategies. The cohort will prepare their final deliverables in 2027 and present their work at a citywide water conference the Design Trust is planning for Spring 2027 (stay tuned for the registration drop coming soon, make sure you’re subscribed to our mailing list to get notified first). Depending on additional funding opportunities, capacity and resources, select project participants may continue to develop their projects with the Design Trust into 2027 and beyond.
In the meantime, you can stay connected with the Water Cohort’s work via:
> Sign up for Greg’s substack, The Blob: a newsletter about algae, the three billion-year-old disruptor that's still making waves
> Check out upcoming events and water safety demonstrations from the Rising Tide Effect.
> Take a guided audio tour of Gowanus’ public murals with the Dear Neighbor Project.
> Learn more about Annabel’s work and design projects in some of the New York Metro area’s most environmentally challenged neighborhoods.
> Follow @thread_design to stay informed on their work.
> Explore water stories from around the five boroughs in our public space blog series: City Currents.
Tomorrow, New Yorkers have access to a sea of more ways to celebrate life with water. Here’s a few of our favorites:
> Join Rising Tide Effect at the Jamaica Bay Festival. “This is a free, fun, family event taking place in Brooklyn and Queens. The Festival celebrates those who share the vision to champion the spirit of the Jamaica Bay community, the unparalleled opportunities and the natural beauty of this urban tidal estuary. Participants can enjoy free kayaking, fishing, surfing, hiking, bird watching, art, nature and more. Rising Tide Effect will be present teaching the community about water safety, running some fun activities and more.”
> Gowanus Dredgers & the RETI Center will host events throughout the day in Red Hook and Gowanus, including community paddles, live music, cleanups, and more here.
> LMCC’s Arts Center At Governors Island will host a City of Water Day discussion on" “art-making and creativity to climate change and the environment, as they relate to our shared waterways and waterfront.” Plus open studios featuring a free art workshop! Register here.
> Nature Areas Conservancy will host a guided walk on the trails at Soundview Park in the Bronx.
> Gotham Park is hosting an evening of performance and community led by water-conscious climate creatives on 8/1. Register for opera, sea shanties, dance, guided walks & paper boat making.
> NYC Department of City Planning has launched a Waterfront Public Access Survey. Do you spend any time on New York City’s waterfront or thinking about how to make it better and more accessible? If so, they want to hear from you! The data will help DCP create ways to enhance these spaces and deliver more inclusive and resilient waterfront public access across the five boroughs.
Explore the comprehensive events map created by the Hudson River Foundation here.
The Water RFP is generously sponsored by the Woodner Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, HKS, Arup, Amalgamated Bank, and Buro Happold.