Van Alen Institute

In New York City and across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color. This crisis threatens to shutter small businesses and expand the racial wealth gap in neighborhoods that already lack access to resources and capital as a result of long-term structural inequity and racism. In response, the Urban Design Forum and Van Alen Institute launched Neighborhoods Now to channel pro-bono resources from New York-based design firms into community-driven recovery strategies.

In May 2020, the Urban Design Forum and Van Alen Institute offered to advise members of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of community organizations across New York City, on their reopening strategies. Five organizations joined the initiative: 82nd Street Partnership in Jackson Heights, Queens; Bed-Stuy Gateway BID and Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn; Community League of the Heights in Washington Heights, Manhattan; and the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition in Kingsbridge, Bronx.

Throughout the summer, these organizations collaborated with coalitions of architects, engineers, lawyers, and planners from Van Alen and Urban Design Forum’s collective network. The outcomes are a set of design recommendations and prototypes addressing immediate needs for COVID-19 awareness campaigns, open air dining, and outdoor education and wellness activities.

In some neighborhoods, prototypes have already been implemented, and Van Alen and Urban Design Forum are actively fundraising to support additional implementation. To help these efforts, learn about sponsorship opportunities here.

Neighborhoods’ needs also went beyond design and physical interventions. To date, the working groups have organized financial workshops for small businesses, drafted legal templates, and collaborated with senior staff at City agencies to help neighborhoods access programs like Open Streets and Open Restaurants.

For more information on Neighborhoods Now, contact:

Stacey Anderson
Associate Director, Business Development and Special Initiatives
sanderson@vanalen.org
212 924 7000 x 18

Information about sponsorship opportunities can be found here.

To learn more about how to support Neighborhoods Now, including helping our community partners realize their recovery strategies, please contact:

Kate Overbeck
Director of Development
koverbeck@vanalen.org
212 924 7000 x 19

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Urban Design Forum mobilizes civic leaders to confront the defining issues facing New York City’s built environment. We are an independent membership organization that empowers professionals of diverse backgrounds, industries and perspectives to shape a better future for all New Yorkers. We investigate complex challenges in the built environment, study alternative approaches from cities around the world, and advance progressive strategies to build a more dynamic and democratic city.

See all work at urbandesignforum.org.

Van Alen Institute helps create equitable cities through inclusive design. In an equitable city, every person is civically engaged, regardless of income or personal circumstances. To achieve that goal, inclusive design supports a community-driven public realm.

For more than 125 years, our purposeful community engagement, convening capacity, and global interdisciplinary network have produced profound transformations in the public realm of New York City and beyond. With a core belief in an interdisciplinary approach to design, the Van Alen team has backgrounds in architecture, urban planning, public health, civic advocacy, community engagement, and arts and culture.