BQE2053 is a multi-year project which envisions a future without the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE). Through workshops, a documentary, oral history archive, symposium and design fellowships, the IPA brings community members, designers, politicians and other stakeholders to the table.

Modeling Community Visions for a Future Without the BQE

The IPA is hosting a series of community design workshops where Brooklyn residents reimagine their neighborhoods in a vibrant post-BQE future. Participants engage with large-scale detailed physical models of neighborhoods adjacent to the BQE, with a removable kit of parts including buildings, landscapes, and alternatives to the highway. Proposals are documented and then shared with local leaders and elected officials.

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The Story of the BQE

The Story of the BQE is a documentary that uses archival footage and photography to show how the construction of the BQE demolished historic neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, divided communities, and displaced hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers across the two boroughs. The IPA has holds several screenings of the film at venues throughout the city.

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Oral History Archive

The oral history project records intergenerational audio interviews between families, friends, and neighbors, providing opportunities for those affected by the BQE to preserve memories of their lives, community, and stories of living near the highway, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future. The IPA has published these interviews in an archive on its website.

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Towards a Decarbonized Sustainable Multi-Modal Transportation Network

The IPA hosted a symposium consisting of a series of panels on highway removal, community land trusts, and visions for the future. Experts and community members discussed if the BQE, with freight moved to rail and water, were to become a tree-lined narrower boulevard rather than a trenched or elevated highway, what could communities want to do with this newly available ‘land bank.’

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Fellowship: Reconnecting Communities Across the BQE

IPA Fellows considered sections of the BQE that might be removed, reconceived as boulevards, or decked-over, with an opportunity for communities to decide which programs—housing, community space, urban farms, recreation, schools, green industries—might occupy this potential ‘land bank’ along the BQE corridor.

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Fellowship: To BE or not to BQE

To kick-off the multi-year BQE2053 project, five teams of IPA Fellows were asked to envision a future without the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway; considering strategies and a re-use of the land it currently occupies in a broader vision for the future of the highway.

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Team

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