In partnership with the Alliance for Paseo Park, WXY helped shape a community-driven vision to permanently transform the 34th Avenue Open Street into a pedestrian-first linear park. Grounded in nearly a year of multilingual engagement across Jackson Heights, Queens, the Paseo Park Community Roadmap presents design strategies that reclaim open space for people while advancing climate resilience, safety, and accessibility in one of New York City’s most diverse and park-poor neighborhoods.

Today, Paseo Park faces two intertwined challenges. First, Paseo Park/ 34th Avenue is asked to do too much at once serving as a street, an outdoor gathering space, and a transportation corridor for bikes, deliveries, and everyday movement. It accommodates children and elders, pedestrians and mopeds, public events and city services within the same limited space. Second, while the Open Street has become a beloved community asset, it remains an improvised solution that cannot fully meet long-term needs.

Jackson Heights has the least park space per resident in the city and lacks a true civic center. Without sustained planning and investment, the Open Street risks slipping back into a cut-through for traffic, forfeiting its role as a space shaped by and for the community.

Led by the Alliance for Paseo Park and supported by WXY, the outreach process was designed to meet people where they are. Over eight public tabling sessions, two visioning workshops, multilingual meetings, and intimate kitchen-table conversations, local volunteers captured hundreds of voices—including children, thanks to a custom survey created by Girl Scouts.

WXY translated these ideas into design concepts and spatial strategies, grounding each recommendation in the neighborhood’s lived experience. The result is a roadmap that reflects hyperlocal priorities while aligning citywide goals for equity and resilience.

Based on carefully assessing the needs of the community, the design team established three core ingredients in the paseo park vision.

The Paseo Park Community Roadmap recommends a range of physical improvements—like widening the median, leveling the streetbed with sidewalks, and raising crosswalks—to make the corridor safer and more accessible. New public amenities are envisioned throughout the 26-block stretch, including flexible areas for play, exercise, rest, and outdoor learning. To address growing tensions between pedestrians and high-speed vehicles, the plan proposes creating alternate routes for mopeds and e-bikes along adjacent avenues. The design reinforces 34th Avenue as a community front lawn—calm, green, inclusive, and climate-ready.

The Paseo Park Community Roadmap charts a path toward adding up to 7.5 acres of new park space to a district that urgently needs it—nearly quadrupling the amount of public green space in Jackson Heights. The plan supports six local schools with outdoor learning and recess space, provides safer conditions for older adults and young children, and mitigates flood and heat risk with expanded tree canopy and permeable surfaces. By recentering streets around community use, Paseo Park offers a replicable model for transforming infrastructure into inclusive, climate-smart public space.