Reynoso Introduces Brooklyn’s First Access to Opportunity Index to Illustrate Compounding Inequities and Identify Priority Areas for Investment
Updated Plan Offers a Deeper Analysis of Community Needs and an Expanded Set of Policy Priorities to Ensure Every Brooklynite is Healthy, Housed, and Supported
Almost Every Major City in the World Has a Plan to Guide Growth and Development – Except New York City
READ THE FULL PLAN HERE
BROOKLYN, NY (August 19, 2025) – Today, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso unveiled The 2025 Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn – a roadmap for long-term, equitable growth across the borough. Building on the first Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn, released in 2023, The 2025 Plan offers a deeper analysis of existing inequities in the borough as well as an expanded set of policy priorities that outline a blueprint for ensuring every Brooklynite is healthy, housed, and supported. The 2025 Plan will guide the Borough President’s land use recommendations and serve as a tool for other elected officials, city agencies, community boards, local organizations, and community advocates fighting for change.
“From worsening climate change to skyrocketing rent, many of the challenges we face in New York City are the same challenges cities around the world are experiencing. But while cities like Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Rio de Janeiro respond by building comprehensive plans for the future, New York City simply hopes for the best,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. “It’s time for us to rethink how we manage this city. For too long, New York City has defaulted to zoning as our primary mechanism for planning – leading to the crisis loop we’ve been stuck in for decades. Comprehensive planning, however, allows us to simultaneously respond to our most pressing challenges while creating a long-term, forward-looking vision that ensures New Yorkers today, and those yet to arrive, have the resources they need to access opportunity. Brooklyn is leading the way to bring comprehensive planning to New York City, and I am so proud to offer this resource to advocates and organizers fighting for a more equitable city.”
New York City is one of the only major cities in the world that does not have what is known as a Comprehensive Plan. There is no holistic, long-term vision that guides the City’s growth, investments, or how resources are directed. Instead of planning, New York City zones. This incremental, piecemeal approach has contributed to displacement and record-breaking levels of inequality. Today, New York City is home to the world’s highest concentration of millionaires. At the same time, New York City’s poverty rate is twice the national average with a staggering 2 million New Yorkers, or 25% of the city’s population, unable to afford basic necessities. A majority of renters in New York City are rent burdened and over 30% are severely rent burdened, spending more than half of their earnings on rent. New York City public schools remain among the most segregated in the country and more than half of NYC families with children aged four and under cannot afford child-care. All of these inequities are interconnected and compound upon themselves, yet they are often treated individually in the absence of comprehensive planning.
Mapping Opportunity in Brooklyn
Among the most notable additions to The 2025 Plan is the creation of an Access to Opportunity Index. The tool weighs five major elements – education, transit, jobs and job resources, health and active living, and climate risk – to paint a picture of where opportunity is and is not in the borough. This visualization will help Borough President Reynoso, advocates, and community organizations identify areas in need of interventions, ensuring that investments in healthcare, economic development, and social services are directed where they are most needed.
“The thing about a borough, a neighborhood, a block – it’s not just a geographic location. It’s a gateway to a suite of resources – to schools, to jobs, to trains, buses, healthcare facilities, parks, libraries – all of the things that shape our daily lives and our future possibilities,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
The neighborhoods with the highest access to opportunity include parts of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Boerum Hill. Mapping higher-opportunity areas can inform how the borough understands its housing needs and priorities. In many of Brooklyn’s higher-opportunity communities, housing growth has lagged despite strong access to jobs, transit, and essential services – revealing missed opportunities for equitable development. By increasing housing in these areas, more Brooklynites can gain access to resources that promote upward mobility.
Neighborhoods with less access to opportunity include Coney Island, Canarsie, and Red Hook. Understanding lower-opportunity areas informs where deliberate investment is required to address systemic disparities. For example, The 2025 Plan finds that the proposed Interborough Express (IBX) transit line would significantly improve access to opportunity in southern and eastern Brooklyn by providing a more direct link to job centers, educational institutions, and economic hubs. By reducing travel time and connecting historically underserved communities to employment opportunities, the IBX would have a transformative effect on more than 900,000 residents and 260,000 workers who live and work within a half-mile of the line and are currently underserved by our transit system.
“What this index makes clear is not where Brooklyn is failing, it’s where government is failing Brooklyn. And we can use this index as a tool of advocacy, accountability, and planning to build opportunity into the neighborhoods long deprived of it,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
Navigating The 2025 Plan
The over-350-page Plan with more than 100 maps opens with a Framework that provides a thorough analysis of existing conditions to identify what the borough’s challenges are and where The 2025 Plan’s priorities are most urgent. The Framework offers a big-picture view for how to improve conditions, manage growth, and advance health across the borough.
Following the Framework are a series of eight Elements that outline how toadvance The Plan’s vision and goals. Through this set of Elements – Housing; Health; Climate; Jobs; Education; Public Realm; Transit + Freight; and Community Infrastructure – Borough President Reynoso offers hundreds of coordinated policy recommendations that combine original and already existing but siloed work (i.e., work underway at individual City agencies).
The 2025 Plan is not a substitute for a citywide comprehensive plan or ongoing local planning efforts. It is not a rezoning proposal, and it is not something the Borough President can implement on his own. However, it is intended to inform the Borough President’s land use decisions and recommendations, and to provide shared data and information to all Brooklyn stakeholders. It is a living document, intended to be updated and responsive to new needs in Brooklyn’s many communities.
Reynoso Renews Call for Citywide Comprehensive Planning
For years, Borough President Reynoso has championed citywide comprehensive planning. As a Council Member, Reynoso introduced legislation that would have created citywide comprehensive planning. In 2023, Borough President Reynoso took matters into his own hands by creating The 2023 Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn which was then New York City’s largest borough-specific planning effort – surpassed only by The 2025 Plan. This year, Reynoso testified before both Charter Revision Commissions to call for a Charter Amendment mandating citywide comprehensive planning. Specifically, the proposal would require the City of New York to create and update a comprehensive plan every 10 years that includes a citywide needs assessment and a 10-year capital plan that prioritizes investments in response to said needs. With the newly released 2025 Plan, Borough President Reynoso hopes to model how City leaders can scale comprehensive planning citywide.
