CBH Talk | Green Gentrification and the Future of the BQE
This program is offered in partnership with the Institute for Public Architecture and the Brooklyn Heights Association.
When Robert Moses built the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), he demolished historic neighborhoods, disrupted thriving communities, and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents—disproportionately people of color and immigrants. Eight decades later, sections of the BQE are crumbling, prompting discussions about repair and reimagination. As officials and communities consider the future of this artery, attention is turning to alternative ways to move goods and freight, revitalize neighborhoods, reconnect communities, and address environmental harm all while avoiding the pitfalls of gentrification and displacement.
“Green gentrification” refers to eco-friendly urban improvements that, while beneficial, inevitably increase property values and living costs, pushing out long-term residents. Join the Center for Brooklyn History, the Institute for Public Architecture, and the Brooklyn Heights Association for an evening exploring how green gentrification can be considered – and avoided – as we look towards the future of the BQE.
The event begins with a screening of The Story of the BQE, a documentary by architect Adam Paul Susaneck, Founder of Segregation by Design, produced by the Institute for Public Architecture. It is followed by a discussion with a panel of experts, activists, and stakeholders about the challenges of green gentrification and strategies to address them. Panelists include Dr. Frances Lucerna, Co-Founder of El Puente and Founding Principal of the El Puente Academy for Peace; Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director of Fifth Avenue Committee; Marc Norman, Associate Dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University; and Nilka Martell, Founder/Director of Loving the Bronx. Leading the conversation is Tiffany-Ann Taylor, Vice-President of Transportation at the Regional Plan Association.
A light reception will follow the program.
Participants
Dr. Frances Lucerna is Co-Founder of El Puente and Founding Principal of the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. An artist, educator and activist who has served her community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn for the last four decades, she is a recognized pioneer of community driven-arts and holistic education. In 1980, she founded the Williamsburg Arts & Culture Council for Youth, the first performing and visual arts program for young people in “Los Sures”, the Southside of Williamsburg. In 1982 she co-founded El Puente, a nationally recognized human rights organization that develops leadership for peace and justice through the arts, education, scientific research, wellness and environmental justice. It remains at the forefront of community-led movements for self-determination and as such initiates/promotes social policy locally and nationally.
As El Puente’s Artistic Director, she led one of NYC's most comprehensive Latinx Arts and Cultural Centers providing free pre-professional multi-arts training for hundreds of young people annually, supporting and organizing a powerful network of community artists, artisans and cultural workers of color, and curating dynamic seasons of diverse arts and cultural events. A recognized model for community driven, culturally rooted arts for social change, El Puente received the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ “Coming Up Taller Award.”
In 1993 Dr. Lucerna became the Founding Principal of the El Puente Academy for Peace & Justice. It was the first public school in the nation dedicated to Human Rights. As a pioneering holistic “community school” model, El Puente Academy has been widely researched and recognized for its innovation and leadership in culturally responsive education, arts integration, social emotional learning and leadership development.
In 2002, Dr. Lucerna assumed the role of Executive Director and continued to lead the expansion of El Puente’s youth/community leadership programs and social justice initiatives. In 2013, El Puente expanded to Puerto Rico, creating its Latino Climate Action Network (LCAN) which is leading an island wide people’s movement for climate justice.
Dr. Lucerna has served on many local, citywide and national advisory boards. She has also received numerous awards for her pioneering work to include “Celebrating Success” from the Children’s Defense Fund and the Heinz Award for the Human Condition with her late husband and founder of El Puente, Luis Garden Acosta. In 2018 she received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from her alma mater Bank Street College in recognition of her contribution to the movement for educational equity and justice.
Nilka Martell is Founder/Director of Loving The Bronx, and Board Chair of the Bronx River Alliance and Pelham Bay Park. A passionate environmentalist and community advocate,she has significantly contributed to the revitalization of the Bronx River and surrounding areas. Through Loving The Bronx and the Bronx River Alliance, Nilka has mobilized countless volunteers for cleanup and conservation projects, fostering a strong sense of community and environmental stewardship. She led the campaign to cap the Cross Bronx Expressway, convert it into green space, and ending the flow of pollution from the Cross Bronx into surrounding neighborhoods. After years of lobbying the allocation of federal funds to cap the expressway from the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2024.
Marc Norman is the Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair in Real Estate Development & Investment, and Associate Dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University. A renowned urban planner and a veteran in the field of community development and finance, Norman also is the founder of Ideas and Action, a consulting firm. Before joining NYU in July 2022, he was an Associate Professor of Practice at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, where he also served as Faculty Director of the Weiser Center for Real Estate at the University’s Ross School of Business. A former Loeb Fellow, Norman also has extensive experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors and has worked collaboratively to develop or finance over 2,000 units of housing totaling more than $400 million in total development costs.
Adam Paul Susaneck is an architect and urban planner researching how transportation and housing policy have been used as instruments of physical division within urban areas, and how we can reconnect communities divided by the infrastructure choices of the past. His ongoing project, Segregation by Design, aims to catalog the destruction caused by mid-century urban renewal and highway projects, and to highlight the work advocates are doing to heal the divide. Adam has written for The New York Times, The Architect's Newspaper, and others. He is pursuing his PhD in urban planning at the Delft Institute of Technology in the Netherlands and earned his Master of Architecture from Columbia University. He is a Project Manager at AECOM working on transportation projects both in the Benelux and in the Northeast US.
Tiffany-Ann Taylor is the Vice President for Transportation at the Regional Plan Association (RPA). Prior to working at RPA, she served as Deputy Director of Freight Programs, Education and Research for the Freight Mobility unit at the New York City Department of Transportation and as an Assistant Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
During her time in New York City Government, Tiffany led transformative passenger transportation projects, freight policy, and truck safety and compliance initiatives. Prior to her time with the City, Tiffany focused on suburban and regional planning efforts while working for the Suffolk County Department of Economic Development & Planning on Long Island, New York where her primary projects were centered on passenger transportation, open space, and economic development. She holds a B.A in Government from The College of William & Mary and a M.S in City & Regional Planning from Pratt Institute.
Tiffany is a first-generation American, the brainchild of the Hindsight Conference and former President of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association. Tiffany is an alum of the Coro Leadership New York Program, the Urban Design Forum’s Forefront Fellowship Program, the NYU Rudin Center Emerging Leaders in Transportation Fellowship program and is a former mentor of Transit Center’s Women Changing Transportation Mentorship program.
Michelle de la Uz is the Executive Director of Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc. (FAC) and has over 25 years of experience in public and community service. Michelle oversees the organization’s mission and comprehensive programs advancing economic, social and racial justice that serve more than 6,000 people with low- and moderate-incomes; a budget of over $10 million and several non-housing affiliate corporations with annual budgets of over $9 million, real estate assets over $260 million, and a housing development pipeline of over 1,750 units, representing $1 billion in total development costs. She serves on several boards including the national board of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and is the Chair of the New York Housing Conference. Additionally, Michelle served as a City Planning Commissioner on the New York City Planning Commission from 2012-2021.
About Our Partners
Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA) is the organized voice of Brooklyn Heights. We work to engage the entire community in making our neighborhood a better, more connected, and more sustainable place to live, work, and visit – now and in the future.
The Institute for Public Architecture (IPA) uses design to challenge social, physical, and environmental inequities in New York City. The IPA believes in a future in which design is used as a tool for facilitating social justice and the public has a voice in all decisions that shape our built environment. The Story of the BQE: A Film and Oral History Project continues IPA’s efforts since 2020 to highlight the institutional segregation and environmental impacts created by the highway and help raise awareness of the historical exclusion of underserved communities in decision-making about their physical space.
Pictured above, clockwise from top left: Williamsburg section of BQE under construction; BQE and Furman Street, 1957; Protesters
