Two NYC Communities to Get Public Space Revamp
Next City
By Rachel Dovey
Here are the winning projects from the Design Trust for Public Space's latest contest.
The Mott Haven-Port Morris community in the Bronx is bracing for an influx of market-rate housing and new hotel developments. But 38 percent of its residents live in poverty, with an average median income of less than $20,000 a year To capture some of that redevelopment value for the area’s current residents, a group of organizations including South Bronx Unite, the New York City Community Land Initiative and the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewards want to create a community land trust, and their idea was one of two recently chosen for the Design Trust for Public Space’s 2017 Call for Projects.
“A community land trust would allow neighborhood residents to own and manage real estate for the perpetual public benefit,” according to a release from the Design Trust. South Bronx Unite hopes to build a mapping project that “geographically identifies potential physical assets, social and cultural capital, as well as impediments,” for the creation of affordable public space.
The Design Trust’s other winning project takes aim at a pedestrian plaza at 125th Street in East Harlem, creating a solution for keeping up 14 other plazas in low-income areas across New York City in the process.
