Abstract
The Lower East Side of Manhattan has a rich, cultural fabric and beautiful, historic streetscapes. It includes famous cultural enclaves, such as the East Village, Alphabet City, Chinatown, the Bowery, and Little Italy. This vibrant community, which is home to many immigrants and includes numerous lower-income households, has become a target of real estate developers. The stressors of gentrification are so consistently strong that the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Lower East Side (LES) one of America’s Most Endangered Places in 2008.
We’ve been totally ignored. If you walk to South Street (Waterfront Park) it looks like a piece of junkyard. They did fix it a little bit and they put some exercise bars and things like that, but still, nothing compared to when you see what residents have on the West side. My neighbors go to the West side to use the parks there, but they have to pay for the bus. And so, when they did the People’s Plan for the East River Waterfront they started talking about ways to stop the flooding naturally while also giving us access to the water. And I said, “Okay, now we’re talking.”
—Aixa Torres, President of Alfred E. Smith Resident Association
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© 2018 Barbara Brown Wilson
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Wilson, B. (2018). The Lower East Side, Manhattan: Tactical Urbanism Holding Space for the People’s Waterfront. In: Resilience for All. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-893-0_4
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