Columbia GSAPP Urban Planning Studio
January–May 2022 | New York
Background
In Spring 2022, I participated in a semester-long urban planning studio along with 11 other peers where we examined the Open Streets and Open Restaurants program in New York City. Our client was the NYC Department of Transportation, Office of Street Improvement Programs (OSIP).
While these programs started off as responses to the global pandemic, they are now becoming permanent fixtures in the city. As the City transitions these programs into permanence, our studio explored how these public space initiatives can more equitably provide social and economic benefits to residents across the five boroughs, particularly for low-income communities of color.
Process and Findings
Our studio’s community engagement process involved soliciting feedback from over 150 participants across 2 Open Streets engagement events (34th Ave in Jackson Heights and Vanderbilt Ave in Brooklyn), interviewing over 60 restaurants, and conducting 23 Open Street site visits. Through our engagement, we found significant inequities in how Open Streets and Open Restaurants’ benefits are distributed throughout the city. For example, Open Streets organized without the support of a Business Improvement District heavily relied on neighborhood volunteerism. Additionally, some public spaces were inactive, contrary to their publicly stated operating hours.
Recommendations to Client
Our studio recommendations were as follows:
- We created a vision for what Open Streets could be moving forward, known as CoScapes. The CoScapes plan proposes: A typologies-based tactical toolkit that reflects the unique circumstances of each neighborhood,
- An equitable fee structure for Open Restaurants designed to encourage public accessibility and use,
- A funding system that activates CoScapes programming in both utilized and underutilized streets, and,
- A place management governance approach that facilitates a community-based co-creation of public space and compensates community members for their labor in running CoScapes
