With New York City as backdrop, this panel will explore the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned undertaking bold placemaking efforts within very different contexts: A well-established business improvement district and mixed-income residential neighborhoods. USQ Next is Union Square Partnership’s visionary plan for further transforming the entire district into New York City’s most accessible and inclusive place. Tali Cantor (Director of Planning) will discuss how the organization developed a public realm plan that centers accessibility/equity for a location vital for civic gathering and commerce. Cantor will share the challenge of prioritizing multi-modal accessibility and permanent open space through the conversion of existing street space, and discuss why the Partnership pivoted to a range of lower cost projects, including the annual delivery of volunteer powered asphalt art mural and the development of a model block showcasing streetscape upgrades planned district-wide. Jackson Chabot (Director of Advocacy and Organizing, Open Plans) and Mike Lydon (Co-founder, Street Plans) will discuss bottom-up placemaking initiatives in the Manhattan Valley and Morningside Heights neighborhoods. They will delve into methods for overcoming myriad challenges associated with resident-led placemaking in contexts that lack the organizational resources and political capital found within business improvement districts. One example, Park to Park 103, is a four-year old placemaking initiative that recently transformed a pandemic era Open Street into a two block pedestrian priority corridor, further linking Central Park with Riverside Park via Douglass Houses, a large public housing campus. The second, most recent effort is a streetscape plan for West 111th Street that emerged from an Open Plans and West 111th Street block association-led planning process called Building Blocks. Chabot and Lydon will share results and lessons learned from both initiatives seeking to advance public realm improvements in low or moderate-resource settings.
