The Future of Infrastructure and Place

How will we build an infrastructure of care in communities long burdened by the work of moving people and goods across cities and regions? Recent policy efforts across the country have sought to redress the harms wrought by midcentury infrastructure projects on working-class and racialized neighborhoods, which persist to this day. Simultaneously, the ever-intensifying impacts of the climate crisis require both the adaptation of existing structures and invention of new solutions to ensure a sustainable future. To address both the demands of the future and legacies of the past, we end up in the present: in the places where communities live on top of, around, and within the operational systems of our cities and regions.

More than the site of modernist original sin or a relic of urban ruination, the Cross Bronx Expressway is a material fact: a heavily trafficked and polluting roadway running within half a mile of more than 200,000 Bronx residents. Cross Bronx/Living Legend, an exhibition organized by Urban Omnibus in collaboration with the NYC Department of City Planning, presents images and experiences from the neighborhoods along the corridor as a way to move beyond abstract and technical understandings of the highway and its effects to imagine and demand more ambitious and expansive visions for its future.

What is the path forward to contend with infrastructure like the Cross Bronx, address historic and contemporary harms, and honor the needs and desires of current residents, rather than repeating damaging approaches of the past? Bringing together perspectives from environmental justice, community activism, urban planning, civil rights, and urban design, this event probes the future of infrastructure in the context of place, in New York City and on a national scale. This conversation will take place in a circle format with the audience invited to join the highlighted speakers in responding to questions and prompts from the exhibition’s collection of community stories about the past, present, and future of the Cross Bronx.

In conversation

Karen Argenti, community and environmental consultant

Kevin Garcia, senior transportation planner, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance

Raísa Lin Garden-Lucerna, environmental justice manager, El Puente

Ben Gilmartin, partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and president, AIA New York

Nilka Martell, parks advocate, writer, and founder of Loving the Bronx

Tiffany Ann Taylor, vice president for transportation, Regional Plan Association

Siqi Zhu, director of planning & urban technology, associate principal, Sasaki

The conversation will be facilitated by Elizabeth Hamby, director of civic engagement at the New York City Department of City Planning.