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“Under the Elevated” is the first major urban initiative to propose a comprehensive approach in revitalizing New York City’s hundreds of miles of elevated infrastructure. We saw the need and potential to reimagine these often noisy, uninviting, and underutilized spaces beneath our city’s subway lines, highways, and bridges. The resulting study in partnership with the NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) surveyed and analyzed this vast citywide network. Recommendations were released in June, 2015.

“Under the Elevated” puts New York City at the forefront of the growing national and international trend of addressing and reclaiming aging elevated transportation infrastructure and the spaces—or “el-space”—associated with it. Our goal is simple—to make these often forlorn spaces, mostly located in upper Manhattan and other boroughs, more active and attractive assets for residents and neighborhoods, especially in disrupted and physically disconnected communities, and to create an innovative program to manage and enhance el-space through physical improvements, temporary installations and a variety of programming citywide.

As part of this effort, the Design Trust and NYC DOT have begun experimenting with improvements to el-space, including installing additional lighting, seating, and art between 2014 and 2015 in Manhattan’s Chinatown and the Morrisania neighborhood in the Bronx. The Design Trust and NYC DOT will launch several pilots in other neighborhoods for further testing.

“We saw a necessity to evaluate what these spaces [under the elevated infrastructure] are and manage them better.” – Neil Gagliardi, Director of Urban Design, NYC Department of Transportation

“After having workshops and talking to people, we decided to create an installation that provided seating, lighting, and had speakers embedded in it playing music that originated in the Bronx.” – Chat Travieso, Under the Elevated Participatory Design Fellow

“I saw ‘Under the Elevated’ as an opportunity to reenvision spaces under elevated structures and provide the sense of space.” – Kerry McLean, Community Development Vice President, Women Housing and Economic Development Corporation

–Design Trust for Public Space on Vimeo

Tags: MTA, New York City, NYC, NYC DOT, Subway

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2016 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Equity, Local, Public Transportation, Show Us Your Infra, Transit, Urban Planning . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.