VILLAGE LINE CLAUDIA A. ALIFF
This project seeks to address Pennsport’s biggest issues of access, overpaving, and lack of diversity of uses and places with an intergenerational community. A successful intergenerational neighborhood is fundamentally heterogenous, dynamic, and walkable. Folks of all ages need to easily access shopping, services, and leisure even when mobility or time is limited. This extension of the Pennsport neighborhood would be a place where people could spread roots, agein-place, and is inviting and dynamic to move through and to. To do this, this proposal builds on the New Hierarchical Framework. Within that framework, what used to be Columbus Boulevard becomes a rail park that serves as the heart of the community. To improve access, the walls at Morris and Pierce Streets, a transit center, and an innerblock courtyard path between allows those coming from the southern side access to the park through a courtyard. The transit center on the new Columbus Boulevard and updated transit routes allow Philadelphians to visit and residents to connect within and outside of the site. As the neighborhood peels east from Columbus to the Delaware River, the scale changes from dense to residential. This allows for there to be a variety of housing typologies, ranging from micro-units to stacked and single-family townhomes and dedicated senior housing that serve users of all ages and types. Finally, the park is organized into three distinct nodes and Columbus Boulevard. The northernmost node is the Work-Study-Lounge Node, where schools, the public library, and offices coalesce and there is an abundance of open space that caters to their lunch, learning, and lounging needs. The next node is the Community Node, where community-directed space and services are located and folks of all ages are able to meet their most basic needs like health, food, etc.
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Finally, the Play+Linger node at the southernmost point draws families in to play and hang out, and an enclosed park at the edge draws people into the smaller park from the large East-West Park. The shape and character of the park informs the uses around it as much as the other way around. It makes accessing the waterfront easier, creates a diverse and vibrant community, and gets rid of the over-paving problem currently in Pennsport. Catalyst sites in each nodes make the project feasible in phases.
