Northwest Queens
Growth is hitting Woodside, Sunnyside, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights in dramatic fashion, and the Pratt Center is working with community groups there to build a new plan to guide development in ways that will benefit the borough and its communities.
Immigration is fueling the population growth. During the 1990s, the population of this large section of Queens jumped 25%, to 311,536. Yet the number of homes and apartments in these communities has not kept pace, rising by only 10 percent during the same period. As a result, rents are rising, affordable housing is scarce, and 30 percent of the families in these communities are overcrowded in their current homes.
Local Community Boards and the Department of City Planning have recognized that increased demand is creating a speculative environment. They have pushed for downzoning to ward off over-development and gentrification.
While this is understandable, it reinforces the housing crisis and makes life even more difficult for the communities' large immigrant population.
Working with a coalition led by Asian Americans for Equality 
and Forest Hills Community
House , the Pratt Center is helping to create a
positive community response to these conditions. The groups are spearheading
a foray into community-led planning, trying to guide new construction and
carefully balance the neighborhoods' low rise character with the need for
more affordable housing, schools, and transportation.
The groups do not intend to file a formal plan under section 197-a of the city charter. Instead, they are pushing an intensive process of community visioning. Throughout the winter and spring, the Pratt Center will work with the groups to hold scoping meetings throughout the neighborhoods. Community people themselves will determine what their neighborhoods need and how their neighborhoods should grow. Once the plan is in place, it will be up to local groups to use it to promote appropriate development and as a yardstick to evaluate future proposals from the private sector and the city. The groups hope that this process will give immigrants, who make up 60% of the population of these neighborhoods, a new pathway towards participation in local decision-making.
The Northwest Queens effort is a test case in participatory and balanced planning, an attempt to enable development while strengthening residents' control over their communities, so that these neighborhoods can grow without gentrification and can continue to fulfill their historic roles as healthy incubators for the immigrants who keep New York City vibrant.
In February 2006, the Pratt Center and its partners conducted several
visioning processes. Click here to view
the presentation from the sessions. 
Report: Creating Opportunity, Preserving Livable Communities: A Planning Study of Northwest Queens
Our partners in this coalition include:
site by Dtek Digital Media