Green Agenda for Jackson Heights

Participants in a November 2009 visioning session brainstorm ideas for a sustainable future in Jackson Heights.

NOW AVAILABLE: The Green Agenda for Jackson Heights

Healthy, Safe People and Places

The Green Agenda for Jackson Heights is a collaboration between Queens Community House, Friends of Travers Park and the Pratt Center for Community Development, bringing together residents of Jackson Heights to plan an environmental blueprint for the neighborhood.

Jackson Heights is already a ‘green’ community in that most people in this neighborhood take public transportation, live in compact spaces, shop locally and live frugally. But Jackson Heights also faces a distinct set of environmental challenges. The City Council district that includes Jackson Heights has just 1 acre of park space for every thousand children. Traffic to and from nearby LaGuardia airport pollutes the air and clogs the streets. And Jackson Heights has a larger share of tenants living in severely overcrowded housing than any other neighborhood in New York City.

Air quality, traffic, open space and housing conditions are among the issues participants are grappling with in through a process that is engaging hundreds of neighborhood residents and ultimately influence city spending, services and priorities. It is the first community-wide conversation on ’greening’ Jackson Heights. In the process, residents identified seven priority topic areas that areas:In a series of visioning sessions that began in November 2009, over 400 residents assessed the state of the neighborhood environment and identifed opportunities to improve it. At these workshops, participants did group exercises to reckon with specific sites, needs and challenges in the neighborhood and come up with concrete responses. Participants in these vision sessions identified priority areas for greening Jackson Heights, including expanding open space, reducing waste, and many other steps toward environmental and economic sustainability.

The Sustainability Visioning Workbook

In this extraordinarily diverse neighborhood, the Green Agenda is reaching out across ethnic lines to build a common agenda for future development. Through February 2010, volunteers solicited input in Jackson Heights schools, community groups, religious institutions and other settings where residents gather, using a workbook designed by the Pratt Center. The ideas and findings gathered from the visioning session and workbooks were the focus of a final session designed to generate a set of priorities to guide community planning and services in the future. We encouraged groups in Jackson Heights to hold their own sustainability visioning sessions, using a workbook that presents a series of activities to identify participants' views on the neighborhood's future. The workbook includes activities assessing the community's strengths and weaknesses, the top issues of concern to participants, and imagining Jackson heights in the future. The workbook asked those using it to brainstorm ideas for steps toward sustainability.