Advocates believe Philadelphia’s waterways could be the next great playground — if the City prioritizes it

On an unseasonably cool Saturday during one of this spring’s stretches of wet weather, Yazmine Acosta, a 14-year-old from South Philadelphia, greeted visitors at a lakeside dock at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, just across Broad Street from the Wells Fargo Center. Her slender arms outstretched, she demonstrated how to swoop a paddle’s ends in and out of the water in a figure eight fashion, instructing people twice her size and three times her age on proper kayaking technique.

Two years earlier, Acosta had never been in a kayak. In fact, at that point she barely knew that activities such as kayaking existed, especially so close to the boxed-in environs of her South Philly block. But when she saw fliers at her school for Discovery Pathways, a nonprofit with a mission to get more Philadelphians paddling on local waterways, she decided to try kayaking.

Read the full article in Grid Magazine's August 2025 issue.