The Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge competition hosted by Van Alen Institute brought together over 250 professionals and young students to share ideas and solutions for responsive short-term interventions and longer-term, large-scale reconfigurations of one of the most memorable and iconic structures in New York City and the world: The Brooklyn Bridge.

Prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and demonstrations against police brutality, the competition brief required streets and shared spaces to address the present moment and past injustices, and to enable peaceful gatherings, safe transportation, a healthy environment, and opportunities for small businesses to flourish. 

Built in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was a symbol for the powerful new energy of the American city, and an innovative transit artery that carried 425,000 passengers a day on its cable railway and streetcars, and by bike, foot and carriage.

Between 2008 and 2018, the number of cyclist traffic doubled on weekends and by 2019, more than 16,500 pedestrians are known to have walked the bridge on an average weekday. 

BIG + Arup’s Back to the Future envisions a radical, yet incremental re-thinking of the Brooklyn Bridge by returning the 19th-century structure to its original iconic state, both architecturally and functionally, while piloting innovations in autonomous mobility and public space design.

Back to the Future’s phased strategy takes advantage of congestion pricing and other innovations that will reduce and redistribute car traffic around our urban core. The proposal begins with the introduction of safe, dedicated bike lanes; slowly transitioning to include public transit routes; expanded space for pedestrians; and, finally, paving the way for an electric and autonomous future.

Towards New York Harbor, the resulting plaza in the sky is proposed as a flexible space accommodating new sweeping views, quiet spaces for reflection and a diversity of activities for New Yorkers and visitors that change with the seasons and evolve over time. 

At the bridge anchorages, legacy car infrastructure has crowded the historic bridge vaults, impeded access to the waterfront and divided communities from one another for decades. As the bridge transitions away from vehicular use, these ramps can be removed, and life brought back to the historic vaults and their surroundings.

In DUMBO, Brooklyn, legacy city properties can be rethought to create spaces that welcome New Yorkers. As New York City’s aging subway system strains to keep up with demand, and the city continues to search for new and safe ways to commute in the coming years, the creation of safe, dedicated and shaded corridors for biking and collective transit is the most high-impact, low-cost urban investment towards recovery. The corridors in Back to the Future can be interwoven seamlessly with the existing network of vehicular streets, creating a city with room for both people and logistical demands. 

As innovations at the Brooklyn Bridge and others are piloted, this network of People Streets can branch out across the city, strategically linking to the neighborhoods that need them most, and as the Brooklyn Bridge did one-and-a-half centuries ago, bringing New York back to the forefront of urban innovation. 

Finally, Back to the Future seeks to release 32 acres of public realm, more than five times the area of the High Line, re-connecting neighborhoods and offering natural and recreational spaces for adjacent communities and a growing city.