In mid-August, at the foot of the city of Lillian-Wald, made up of sixteen red brick buildings, one of the oldest in Alphabet City, in the south-east of Manhattan (New York). A Hispanic retiree smokes her cigarillo. Leaning on a black metal barrier, she contemplates the customers grouped together on the other side of avenue D, at the entrance to a bodega (a clean neighborhood type of NYC grocery store). In Spanish, she converses with her neighbors wearing a straw hat, a plaid shirt and canvas pants. Behind them, in the shade of a plane tree, on a green space, a dog sniffs the smells.
It is on this same piece of land that the Design Trust for Public Space association will carry out its pilot project “Opening the Edge” (literally: “Open the borders”). The goal: to use the city’s green spaces and open them up to the rest of the district – and the inhabitants – of avenue D. A new square will be created, with benches, a stage, trees, lights. “These are underutilized spaces, explains Jane Greengold, the 60-year-old Harvard alumnus, who has been leading the project for over six years. In addition, they form a separation that cuts off city residents from the rest of the community. “
This project was launched as part of of the Connected Communities Initiative, awarded with a Wellbeing Cities Award 2020 in the category “Creating united communities”. The work, funded three quarters by the New York Housing Authority – the New York City Housing Authority (Nycha) – will cost around $ 1 million (843,000 euros).
Gentrification and social housing
In New York, the cities were built in the heart of the city. With gentrification, upper-middle-class families from Harlem, Brooklyn and even the Bronx ended up settling opposite the cities in luxury buildings. A street or an avenue can thus separate buildings trendy invested by the upper classes, and very impoverished social housing. The project launched in Lillian-Wald aims to reduce this separation between the residents of the city and the families living on the outskirts while fully involving them in the realization.
A group of residents took part in the preparation of the project. For Nicholas Bloom, professor of city politics at Hunter College, this is the only key to success. “It’s a great project because it can increase the value that the inhabitants give to their neighborhood, but only the personal investment of the inhabitants will ensure that the space will be maintained”, he explains.
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