Conclusions

With the rising importance of walkability in cities, it is increasingly critical for programs such as NYC’s Open Streets to provide equitable access to pedestrian-friendly environments. This study evaluated the fairness of the Open Streets program by quantifying its relationship to neighborhood accessibility and key social determinants, including job opportunities, health facilities, educational institutions, and household income. Using an H3-based spatial framework, cumulative accessibility measures, and regression modeling, the project assessed whether Open Streets are distributed in a way that supports walkability across all communities.

The analyses consistently indicate that Open Streets are not serving as a tool to enhance walkability in underserved, lower-income neighborhoods. Instead, the program appears to reinforce existing socioeconomic advantages. Spatial distributions of opportunities and Open Streets both reveal a shared pattern of concentration along the Lower Manhattan to Northwest Brooklyn corridor. The normalized accessibility index (AS_base_norm) further demonstrates that accessibility is significantly higher in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Northwest Brooklyn—areas already advantaged in terms of opportunity density. Regression results corroborate these spatial patterns, showing that Open Streets are disproportionately located in job-dense, school-dense, and higher-income neighborhoods. These findings suggest that the program’s placement is strongly correlated with preexisting structural advantages, rather than aligned with equity-oriented goals. The quartile-based equity diagnostics reinforce this conclusion: both high-income and high-access neighborhoods systematically receive more Open Streets infrastructure, while low-access, low-income areas remain underserved.

Taken together, these results highlight a fundamental inequity in the current implementation of NYC’s Open Streets program. If Open Streets are to function as a tool for expanding walkability and improving urban accessibility, future program planning must prioritize the neighborhoods that currently lack such opportunities.

A key limitation of this study is that it does not incorporate the funding and operational support structure of the Open Streets program, which likely plays a significant role in determining where Open Streets can be established and sustained. Because funding availability and community organizational capacity may strongly shape spatial outcomes, future research should examine how these financial and administrative factors influence placement equity.