The Coalition

Thriving Communities Coalition is a citywide alliance of community, faith, housing, land use, and environmental organizations united by one mission: to end land use injustice in New York City. We believe the city’s housing crisis—and its deep links to environmental racism, gentrification, unemployment, school segregation, NYCHA neglect, and more—cannot be solved without transforming who has the power to shape our neighborhoods.

Our campaign, #OurNeighborhoodOurPlan, is about putting that power where it belongs: in the hands of everyday New Yorkers. We’re organizing to ensure communities—not developers or City Hall—have the final say in how neighborhoods grow. Through community-crafted plans that become part of a binding, citywide comprehensive plan, we aim to hold future mayors and developers accountable to the people before a single building goes up.

Because when communities plan their neighborhoods, they build a more just, thriving, and livable city—for all of us.

Why Comprehensive Planning

What is Comprehensive Planning—and Why Does it Matter for Justice in NYC?

Comprehensive planning is about one thing: making sure our city plans for the future—with all of us in it.

Right now, New York City has no long-term plan for how land gets used. Developers build what’s profitable. The Mayor proposes rezonings neighborhood by neighborhood. And working-class Black, Brown, and immigrant communities are left fighting for the basics—affordable housing, school seats, green space, jobs, cleaner air—after deals are already made.

Comprehensive planning changes that. It creates a fair, citywide process where communities set priorities together, and the city is required to listen. Every ten years, the city sets goals—for housing, parks, climate justice, racial equity, and more. Then each neighborhood develops a community plan to meet its fair share. Together, these plans form a legally binding roadmap that future mayors, developers, and agencies must follow.

This is how we get from crisis to coordination.
From displacement to stability.
From fighting to fixing.
From top-down to people-powered.

For housing justice. For climate justice. For racial justice.

We need a plan. A real one. A fair one. A people’s one. That’s what comprehensive planning is.

Take Action

Developers and politicians have shaped our neighborhoods for too long—without us. It’s time for communities to take the lead. Join us at the meeting of the Charter Revision Commission on 4/23/25.

Coalition Members

Ascendant Neighborhood Development
Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD)
Chhaya CDC
Cypress Hills LDC
East Side House
Fifth Avenue Committee
Good Old Lower East Side
Municipal Art Society of New York
New Economy Project
New York Appleseed
New Yorkers for Parks Coalition
Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition
Pratt Center for Community Development
Regional Plan Association
Riders Alliance
Transportation Alternatives
Queens Community House

Statement on the City’s Report Release & Legislation Introduction December 16, 2020

NYC Needs Enforceable, Equity-Based Comprehensive Planning

New York, NY – The Thriving Communities Coalition is pleased to see Speaker Johnson put the need for planning and land use reform front and center with the report and legislation released today. There is a broad and growing consensus that the City’s current approach to planning is broken. Over the course of many years of neighborhood rezoning battles — and more recently as COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter Movement have further highlighted longstanding, stark racial and economic inequality in New York City — it has become increasingly clear that our current process reinforces existing inequalities and undermines efforts to properly address our current needs and plan for the future.

We need a wholesale change to our City’s planning frameworks and processes. An enforceable, equity-based comprehensive plan has the potential to bring us from a status quo that does not work for most New Yorkers to a more fair and sustainable approach for all of our communities. The Thriving Communities Coalition looks forward to working with the Speaker, the City Council, and the Administration on legislation to help achieve that goal.

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Statement on the Restarting of ULURP August 12, 2020

Don’t Reinforce Systemic Racism as ULURP Restarts

The Thriving Communities Coalition calls on the City to implement an anti-racist approach to expanding access to the ULURP process as it restarts. At a time when the public health, economic, and social crises we face are compounding the negative impacts to low-income communities of color, we need our leaders and decision-makers to commit to doing everything they can to ensure an anti-racist and equitable process for collaborating with the people of New York.

We understand the need to start moving projects forward that advance recovery and address the needs of our hardest hit communities. However, the City needs to address the very serious gaps in access our communities face and ensure that marginalized communities are able to meaningfully and consistently participate in the City’s public processes. Virtual engagement creates a tremendous opportunity to expand the capabilities of city agencies and community boards to reach more people, especially communities of color and low-income communities, where barriers to participation are common. However, simply looking at the raw numbers of people viewing hearings or testifying online does not equal success.

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Statement on NYC Council’s Land Use Hearings April 22, 2020

Land Use Justice Advocates are Disappointed to See Private Land Use Actions Moving Forward

The Thriving Communities Coalition is disappointed to see the New York City Council moving forward with hearings that include a list of private land use actions, at a committee meeting scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday April 22nd. On March 16th, an order from Mayor de Blasio suspended the ULURP process in light of the COVID-19 crisis. This was an important measure to prevent land use changes from proceeding without even the minimal opportunities for public engagement and input the process generally includes. The scheduled hearing seems to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the suspension of ULURP actions, and sets a dangerous precedent for potential future zoning actions during this crisis.

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Statement on NYC Charter Revision Commission Decision August 2019

The Thriving Communities Coalition – a group of community-based and policy-oriented nonprofits focused on equitable land use and planning processes – is extremely disappointed that the Charter Revision Commission has chosen to advance a slate of ballot proposals that will maintain the status quo when it comes to land use planning. New York City is one of the most segregated and unequal cities in the nation, and tackling the root of these issues by reforming the land use process that contributes to them was a leading reason why the City Council, the Public Advocate, and the Manhattan Borough President took the unprecedented step to form a non-mayoral Charter Revision Commission last year.

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