The area around the extension of the Eastern Parkway and parallel with it East-New York Avenue is very interesting to me. At this particular place in Crown Heights, the Eastern Parkway crosses the existing grid, and the grid changes direction at the East-New York Avenue. Because of this, there are a lot of streets, and all kinds of irregular shaped blocks, which make it a very interesting place. The numerous vacant lots (2nd image, in brown) and poorly used parking spaces (purple) make this a site with a lot of potential.
The extension of the Eastern Parkway, west from Ralph Avenue, is not at all the kind of Parkway Olmsted & Vaux had in mind more than a century ago. It lacks greens space, proper malls for pedestrians and cyclists and has only 4 car lanes. One of the conclusions from my case-study on parkways was that new grand, green infrastructures, such as the Eastern Parkway, aren't possible in the middle of the dense neighborhood Crown Heights is today.
That is why I propose to redesign this parkway extension through small interventions on the vacant lands and the small residual spaces on the irregular blocks along the parkway. These design of these spaces is supposed to take in account the needs of the neighborhood. When designing the streetscape, they should be envisioned together with public functions nearby, so that these redesigned spaces will actually be used.
Because this site has a lot of streets, it would be easy to close off one for events that will improve the neighborhood. For example a farmers market, an art festival, a street BBQ,...
My intention is to make a vision for the extension of the Eastern Parkway, between Ralph Avenue and Rockaway Avenue, which incorporates the unused pocket-parks to create a "parkway for the 21st century". After that I will focus on one particular part (4th image) of the eastern parkway to design a community-oriented building, which relates to adjacent streets and pocket-park(s).
