HOME • Natalie Bartfay

About Natalie

Natalie is an urban planning generalist with experience in project management, stakeholder engagement, climate resiliency, and emergency management. Her professional interests center on urban resilience, climate adaptation and mitigation, public space and waterfronts, and community planning.

She works on the Planning & Resilience team at NYC Emergency Management. Previously, she was the Public Space Alliance Fellow with Friends of the High Line, working with infrastructure reuse projects across New York City, and a Climate Adaptation Planning Fellow with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice. She is also co-founder and manager of the open space urbanism collective BERM. Dedicated to her community, she brings additional experience from local non-profits like GrowNYC and the Garment District Alliance and as a volunteer climate organizer. She previously worked in media production.

Natalie holds a graduate degree in Urban Planning from Columbia GSAPP and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Fordham University. A Massachusetts native, she has lived in New York City for close to a decade

Certifications: WEDG Associate
Freelance: Limited availability

See CV

SELECTED WORK

Research, Urbanism

Research, Urbanism

Offshore wind ports and community-based planning

Master’s Thesis, Columbia University

Offshore wind ports and the Just Transition: Community-based planning and power in New York City’s industrial waterfront communities

This work analyzes the conditions and capacity for equitable development processes in industrial maritime neighborhoods subject to New York State’s burgeoning offshore wind industry, a new development instrument that will direct hundreds of millions of dollars into waterfront communities in decline. In particular, this research engages with the waterfront redevelopment of planned “offshore wind ports” with a Just Transition framework. The Just Transition framework is a best practice for green infrastructure development and champions equitable development processes in a shift towards green economies. This research focuses on its principle of self-determination and engages in the complex physical relationships of these industrial sites, asking: how can community-based planning priorities, strategies, and actors work to guide this green waterfront development?

Using a case study-based approach, planned community-level development is expected for Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the home of New York’s first planned wind port (South Brooklyn Marine Terminal) and the southwestern shore of Staten Island (Arthur Kill Terminal, Rossville Municipal Site, and the Staten Island Marine Terminal), projects support by the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s 15-year, $191 million development program Offshore Wind NYC. The case studies compile the respective neighborhood’s existing community-driven visioning, planning instruments, priorities, and perceptions of local industrial waterfront sites slated for OSW-related development and evaluate them against public and private development plans.

Ultimately, this research concludes that offshore port development in New York City offers significant equitable development potential to underserved waterfront communities. However, the scale of community benefits and equity largely depends on existing community advocates, power, and planning tools, benefiting communities with a robust socio-political infrastructure and indicating that a Just Transition is by no means inherent—or easily achieved—to this green industry. Moving forward, the planning profession must support and expand hyperlocal community-based planning and engagement to truly leverage novel offshore wind development in the name of the Just Transition.

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