sustainability planning

NOW AVAILABLE for download: The Green Agenda for Jackson Heights

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 grappled with in through a process that engaged hundreds of neighborhood residents and is designed to ultimately influence city spending, services and priorities. It was the first community-wide conversation on ’greening’ Jackson Heights. In the process, residents identified seven priority topic areas. In a series of visioning sessions that began in the fall of 2009, more than 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.