CHINATOWN STITCH VISION REPORT

THE CHALLENGE

The Vine Street Expressway is a ten-lane highway that has physically divided Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood for seven decades. Since the proposed expressway’s expansion in the 1960s, the community has fought to mitigate its negative impacts, such as fast-moving traffic, congestion, air pollution, and noise. In 2022, the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability (OTIS) partnered with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC) to launch a concept study to build a cap over the Vine Street Expressway, repairing historic harms. 

HOW WE HELPED

McCormick Taylor coordinated a public engagement plan to inform, collaborate with, and gather feedback from community members to develop a final conceptual design for the cap. Knowing that many Chinatown residents and business owners face barriers to traditional public engagement due to systemic marginalization, McCormick Taylor implemented a process specifically designed to reach and encourage participation from populations that are often under-represented in and/or excluded from such projects. All written project materials were made available in Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and English and written following Plain Language guidelines. Along with subconsultant Interface Studios, the firm designed displays and flyers to be distributed at hubs in high-traffic community spaces throughout the project area.  The public was provided with multiple options for providing feedback via surveys on the web, at local hubs and pop-ups, and during two Community Visioning Workshops.  

The feedback indicated the community’s desire to reconnect Chinatown, improve safety, and for an outdoor gathering space, all of which the McCormick Taylor team incorporated into its design concepts. The firm analyzed the retaining walls and existing bridges along the expressway; explored potential roadway changes such as road diets and lane shifts; made recommendations to calm traffic and lower the speed limit; and investigated the regulations for constructing a tunnel.  

RESULTS

Based on extensive community engagement, the Vision Report recommended the construction of a cap over the Vine Street Expressway and related improvements to the local lanes of Vine Street. The cap will cover approximately 2.5 blocks of the Vine Street Expressway between 10th and 13th Streets. This project, called the Chinatown Stitch, will sew the disconnected parts of Chinatown together and address the ongoing harms of the Vine Street Expressway.