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Humanizing the Interborough Express

Spring 2023
Project by: Ana Maria Arpi, Andrew Cronson, Annika Nina Yu, Ariela Kovary, Luke McNamara, Lance Mikhail Punay, Marcell Subert, Raquel Padilla, & Shannon Hui 
Course: Urban Planning Studio 
Instructors: Jeffrey Shumaker, Jenna Dublin-Boc, TA Jim Lammers

Applications
Adobe lllustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Canva, Adobe InDesign, ArcGIS Pro

Methods
Community Engagement, Model Making, Stakeholder Liaison, Material Sourcing, Filmmaking

The IBX is a proposed transformative light rail rapid transit system in New York City that will address an important problem: the lack of efficient public transit connectivity between Brooklyn and Queens. Our team was tasked with facilitating a conversation between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and New York City's Department of City Planning (Queens and Brooklyn Offices) to navigate the decision-making processes of transportation planning concerning the proposed Interborough Express (IBX).

Given the early stage in the IBX development, there was an opportunity to establish a robust foundation for community engagement, relationship building, and inclusive development. Particularly, the studio investigated how they could humanize the IBX by amplifying the grassroots stories and communities that may otherwise be hard to reach in the transportation planning process. Thus, this project sought to explore the capacity of community engagement to humanize the IBX. We developed a methodological framework that could help planners and stakeholders determine the best way to engage a community about a particular topic. The studio aimed to put the framework to the test and use it to determine the most effective engagement strategy for the particular needs, and then implement it in one of the areas of interest to gather data for the clients.

Engagement activities were designed and conducted in Jackson Heights on April 23 and 26, 2023. The activities selected stem from the previously established research and aims:

  • To Educate, materialized as a Gallery Walk activity intended to inform the community about the project.

  • To Learn from, operationalized as a Co-Building Narratives activity aiming to get better insights into the grassroots stories of the community and,

  • To Envision with, translated into a 3D Map with intentions to gather, map, and understand the sentiments and desires of the community.

Through this mixed-methods community engagement process, the implications of findings highlight the importance of identifying and addressing the thoughts and concerns of the community in the IBX's design process that could be helpful to consider and redesign for better outcomes.