Ongoing

District Design Fellowship

Small businesses are the heartbeat of vibrant neighborhoods, but many nonprofits supporting NYC’s commercial districts lack access to creative tools that champion local merchants. To strengthen these efforts, the District Design Fellowship — developed in collaboration with the NYC Department of Small Business Services’ Building Creative Capacity initiative — partnered local leaders from Melrose, Bronx; Port Richmond, Staten Island, and the Upper West Side, Manhattan with designers to develop creative, impactful, and innovative “Buy Local” toolkits for their districts.

From October 2025–April 2026, Fellows developed projects to enhance their commercial corridors through design, storytelling, and public engagement. Throughout the program, Fellows collaborated with dedicated teams of Design Advisors — professionals with relevant expertise in fields such as architecture, graphic design, or urban design. They also thought creatively about design solutions and public space activations in their corridors.

In April 2026, the Fellows launched Buy Local campaigns that celebrate neighborhood identity and harness the power of art and design to boost visibility and foot traffic for small businesses. They also developed Corridor Design Concepts — strategies to leverage a commercial corridor’s public realm, including long-term vision plans and short-term activations such as temporary installations, markets, and special events. Going forward, this suite of materials will enable Fellows to pilot new strategies that strengthen the connection between design, culture, and economic development in their corridors.

Scroll down to learn more. For the most comprehensive look at each team’s work, we encourage you to dive into the Corridor Design Concepts PDFs embedded below, best viewed on desktop.

Jamila Diaz of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco) teamed up with BD Feliz, Perkins Eastman, and Zhiyao Zhang to improve the pedestrian experience and activate public space around the newly-opened Bronx Music Hall.

WHEDco is a community development organization founded on the radically simple idea that all people deserve to live in healthy, vibrant communities. They connect families in the South Bronx with resources that help create thriving neighborhoods, including academic and arts enrichment programs, fresh and healthy food, cultural programming, and economic opportunity.

Context

The South Bronx neighborhood of Melrose is socially strong but spatially fragmented. The area’s land use is residential heavy, with ground-floor retail that’s largely convenience-oriented. An industrial history still defines the urban landscape, and the public realm’s vitality is low relative to the area’s density. Community space primarily exists within the neighborhood’s institutions — such as the Bronx Music Hall and Boricua College — though not all residents are aware they can access and utilize these spaces.

Process

At the start of the Fellowship, the Melrose team defined their scope and gathered input on neighborhood needs from community members via surveys and events. In early 2026, they translated these community priorities into spatial strategies, getting buy-in from WHEDco’s leadership along the way. By Spring 2026, they developed a colorful graphic identity that incorporates music notes and flowers — a nod to the neighborhood’s love for music and history of nurturing green spaces.

They also developed a vision plan for public realm improvements and long-term district growth. Going forward, they’ll use this document as a foundation to support funding conversations, coordinate with city agencies, and pilot public space activations.

Deliverables

Team

Evelin Omana Caballero of La Colmena teamed up with ORG, Thought Matter, and Rosanna Valencia to celebrate the rich history and immigrant community of Staten Island’s Port Richmond Avenue.

La Colmena is a nonprofit community-based organization working with day laborers, domestic workers, and other low-wage immigrant workers in Staten Island through organizing, education, culture, and equitable economic development.

Context

With a long history of welcoming different waves of immigrants over time, today Port Richmond is home to a tight-knit Latin American community with many residents and businesses owners hailing from Puebla, Mexico. Port Richmond Avenue, the area’s main commercial corridor, is anchored by food businesses, remittance services, and everyday retail. Despite its economic and cultural vibrancy, the corridors suffers from fragmented public space, poor pedestrian infrastructure, limited tree canopy, flood vulnerability, and weak physical connections to the waterfront.

Process

This fellowship gave La Colmena an opportunity to think about how branding, public space, and economic development can work together to strengthen an entire commercial corridor. To increase visibility for Port Richmond Avenue’s commercial corridor, they set out to elevate small and immigrant-owned businesses and create culturally resonant branding tools.

Inspired by the form of papel picado, the team created a neighborhood identity centered around a butterfly — a symbol of migration and resilience. With adaptable templates and clear brand guidelines, the identity was created with easy implementation and long-term use in mind. With low-cost, high-visibility materials, this campaign was launched quickly while La Colmena plans for larger long-term improvements.

For their Corridor Design Concept, the team identified six key nodes along Port Richmond Avenue, and developed a suite of recommendations to create a safer pedestrian environment, increased visibility and foot traffic for small businesses, expanded public gathering spaces, reduced flood vulnerability, strengthened cultural identity, and long-term environmental resilience.

Deliverables

Team

Becca Bran of Landmark West! teamed up with Brynn Anderson, Buro Happold, and Pentagram to celebrate the unique architecture and eclectic mix of small businesses along the Upper West Side’s 72nd Street corridor.

Landmark West! is dedicated to building an inclusive community and championing a positive neighborhood quality of life for the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They are an architecture, arts, and culture non-profit that has achieved landmark status for individual buildings and historic districts since 1985. They engage in extensive education outreach, diverse programming and wide-ranging research and preservation advocacy to continue to protect and celebrate the Upper West Side’s unique historic environment. 

Context

West 72nd Street evolved from farmland to a residential corridor connecting Riverside Park and Central Park before gradually becoming a commercial street. Transit expansion, automobile infrastructure, and economic changes reshaped the corridor, shifting it away from its original pedestrian-focused character.

Today, West 72nd Street functions primarily as a vehicular corridor despite its historic role as a pedestrian connection. Traffic congestion, delivery activity, and complex intersections compete with public transit and small businesses for space and visibility. Most of West 72nd Street lies within a historic district, and many buildings retain their original architectural features. However, storefront design often overlooks the historic context of the buildings they occupy.

Process

West 72nd Street has long been home to a vibrant mix of small businesses, and the team’s Buy Local and Corridor Design Concept embrace that energy. A signature corridor brand uses inspiration from the street’s distinctive architecture, creating a design foundation for stickers, maps, lamp pole banners, and tote bags.

Stickers and maps are being distributing to local businesses; businesses are encouraged to place the stickers in their windows to signify they’re local to the neighborhood. These shops will also be given tote bags to give to customers that spend a certain amount of money at their stores as a thank you to loyal customers and a way to boost the neighborhood’s visibility.

To encourage more activity onto the street, Landmark West! is now developing a late night shopping pilot. With participating businesses open late, the street would be further enlivened with live music and performances that encourage visitors to stroll and explore.

Deliverables

Team

Program Managers

Project Advisors

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