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The Plan
NORTH DELAWARE AVENUE: THE THREAD ALONG THE RIVER
In the North Delaware Avenue Study Area, streets play an underutilized role in supporting the public commons. The avenue’s relationship to adjacent connector and local streets has been disjointed rather than connective. North Delaware Avenue skates by the communities it borders, rather than supporting and linking them to essential services. These conditions are also mirrored in core corridors and connector streets through Port Richmond and Fishtown.
The neighborhoods adjacent to Delaware Avenue, Fishtown and Port Richmond, are vibrant neighborhoods, undergoing different paces of gentrification, with tight-knit, albeit, homogenous communal fabrics, that have turned inward rather than outward with the decline of industry along the riverfront. These are increasingly desirable neighborhoods, and with that comes growth management pressures, impacting how residents see change, incoming members, and their relationship to neighboring communities. The physical environment has mediated much of this insularity and the corridors have long been boundaries rather than anchor engines for the community.
Despite the rigidity of the physical streets, these communities are warm, dynamic, and lead with a neighborly charm supported by the intimacy of a village.
THE PLAN: INTEGRATED CORRIDORS FOR SOCIAL COHESION
The North Delaware Riverfront Communities 2030 Plan is a ten-year
neighborhood connectivity plan examining how the redevelopment and reconnection of corridors can spread essential services more equitably through the study area. The plan aims to build upon the core strengths of Fishtown and Port Richmond, including well used open spaces, transportation access, high ranking schools, and invested community groups. Envisioning NKCDC as client and coimplementer, this plan aims to tackle larger physical challenges than typical for a neighborhood RCO, further assisting their mission to support residents in aging in place, upgrading their homes, accessing healthy food, and greening streets. This plan aims to include NKCDC as an active partner in implementing like-minded plans, including The Riverwards 2035 Plan and the DRWC riverfront Plan. Going farther, this plan will harness climate resiliency along the riverfront and Delaware Avenue, leveraging the opportunity to outfit these neighborhoods for looming sea level rise and environmental challenges. This plan looks to street conditions for pedestrian mobility and the equitable spatial distribution of essential services. While a diversity of voices and opinions creates a healthy neighborhood, in Fishtown and Port Richmond, communities are shifting out of insularity. In improving the street network and preventing conditions such as ongoing gentrification and loss of small business identity, this plan will promote a thriving neighborhood centered in mobility justice. The corridor redevelopment will be the starting point to ensuring overall communal health.
15-Minute City
The 15 Minute City is a vision framework for a cohesive neighborhood where all residents can access affordable healthy food, greenspace and public commons, transportation, and education within a safe, 15 minute walk. Safe + Complete Streets are programs and standards for ensuring streets are friendly for users of all ages and abilities. This includes crossing, biking, driving, and walking. They imagine the street and sidewalk as an extension of public gathering space and civic activity.
Safe + Complete Streets
Time Frame
The 10- year plan allows for three rounds of phasing culminating in coordination of programmatic actors and community resiliency. These recommendations are shorter implementations than the Philadelphia 2035 Plan, as they expand upon existing neighborhood and citywide programs.
Client
NKCDC is a neighborhood RCO with a mission to coordinate services amongst the neighborhoods of Fishtown, Kensington, Port Richmond, and Harrowgate. This plan aligns with the mission of the neighborhood organization, while making proposals that NKCDC cannot implement with their resources alone.
Framework
This plan looks beyond Delaware Avenue as a corridor in isolation, examining the major corridors and local streets of the study area as a system. Inspired by the principles of the 15 Minute City and Safe
