Chinatown Connections

In 2024, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) launched Chinatown Connections, the City’s current effort to redesign Kimlau Square and surrounding streets, which includes a plan to add a “Chinatown Welcome Gateway”– a cultural marker intended to represent the Chinatown community. According to EDC, “Chinatown Connections will redesign the gateway to Manhattan’s Chinatown into a safe and vibrant space that celebrates the neighborhood’s Chinese heritage, improves multimodal circulation into and around Chinatown, and supports local businesses.” The plan includes a Street Improvement Project (SIP) along Park Row and at key intersections, led by the Department of Transportation (DOT). 

From EDC’s Chinatown Connections website: “In 2022, in response to the acute challenges the neighborhood is facing, the Chinatown neighborhood received $20 million in grant funding from the New York State (NYS) Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) for 11 projects to support the neighborhood’s economic recovery. Local stakeholders identified these 11 projects through the Chinatown Downtown Revitalization Strategic Investment Plan as catalytic investments intended to improve multimodal circulation into and around Chinatown, support local businesses, and celebrate the neighborhood’s rich cultural history.”

Co-curated by Yin Kong and Kerri Culhane, Making or Faking Chinatown? Representing People, Place and Culture explores the range of placekeeping and placemaking strategies in Chinatowns, from everyday uses of space to the staged production of culture. This exhibition presents extensive research, photographs from Chinatowns across North America, and artwork by artist John Lee.

As our community prepares to take on this important public conversation, we invite our community to study the context and exercise our urban planning vocabulary to make informed decisions about our neighborhood’s public space and our future.