Showing what the BQE corridor could become

The question

New York City’s default plan for the BQE was to rebuild the highway in place at a cost of billions. Off-Ramp NYC wanted the public to weigh that plan against removal, transit, freight reform, and reclaimed land. A comparison like that needs images people can react to, and the triple cantilever in Brooklyn Heights was the hardest place to make one credible.

What I did

I joined in January 2026, before the coalition had a name, and moved the work from single sketches to a corridor-wide set of scenes.

• Developed a triple cantilever concept set showing pedestrian and bicycle reuse, grade-level light rail or bus rapid transit, one traffic lane in each direction, removal of overpasses near Atlantic Avenue, and long-term reclamation of the corridor.
• Flagged the physical constraints alongside the images: the retaining-wall role of the cantilever base, the fragility of a one-lane-per-direction section, and the need to present the scenes as advocacy visuals.
• Directed AI coding agents (Codex and GPT 6 Astra) to build an interactive 3D Blender model of the entire corridor proposal.

What changed

The renderings became the public picture of the teardown alternative. They appeared at a CityNerd LIVE event at Hunter College and in a CityNerd YouTube episode on the BQE’s future, in Streetsblog NYC in March 2026, and in a New York Daily News op-ed by Off-Ramp NYC co-founder Cindy McLaughlin in July 2026. Off-Ramp NYC’s campaign materials carry the visual credit.

Deliverables

• Corridor concept renderings, including the Gowanus Expressway and Hamilton Avenue segment
• Triple cantilever concept set
• Interactive 3D model of the full corridor proposal
• Press, presentation, and social image sets