Springfield Visioning

HOLLYWOOD DISTRICT
Springfield, Massachusetts

The city of Springfield requested urban re-design proposals for the Hollywood district of the South End. The neighborhood is home to established businesses and families of Italian descent and new immigrants from Puerto Rico. The urban fabric – comprising commercial, business, mixed use, single and multi-family residence typologies – has been weakened by blight, crime, poverty, and lax zoning enforcement. These visioning vignettes explore temporary uses of vacant lots as a mediating force, to strengthen community and foster permanent future solutions. Urban agriculture, public art, and marketplace ideas/schemes/scenarios are presented.

The vignettes were designed as public participation tools, to start conversations about immediate and future community needs. As such, it is important that they present/offer an open-ended, ideas-in-progress process, rather than expertly determined solutions. Collage was chosen to represent this approach due to its inherently unfinished nature, which requires active viewer participation in creating meaning.

Flea Market

Public Art

Community Garden