Members of the Upper East Side’s community board are supporting an initiative aimed at rethinking New York’s FDR Drive, which would make the waterfront both more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists and more environmentally sustainable.Community Board 6 commissioned a firm called WXY Architecture + Urban Design to undertake the study and presented its findings to Community Board 8.

Although it is not a comprehensive study, the presentation offered a new vision as to how the East River could better serve its community members. Among its goals are to increase waterfront access and public amenities, reduce dependency on the FDR Drive highway, “restitch” the FDR Drive to the city grid and “prioritize multi-modal safety and connectivity,” among other things. The study also proposes several ways in which the FDR could be utilized in the future, including building elevated parks over it and transforming portions of the boulevard at the ground level.