Pop-up programming in Chinatown enlivens a plaza for community

Cheng Zha lives in the neighborhood and has made it to every 10th Street Thursday so far. He’s a fan of the games, but has also been able to see all the different programming that has been rotating each week: a guitar-playing circle, a dance performance by the Chinese American Women’s Sisterhood Society, and face-painting for the children.

Margaret Chin brings her two granddaughters, ages 5 and 2, to the plaza for the 10th Street Thursdays. She gestures towards the girls blowing bubbles: “This is their favorite. It’s a lot better being out here than in the apartment,” she said. “This is one of the nice things we have in our community. We can actually sit out here, read a book, play mahjong, chess, whatever. It’s in the middle of a highway, but still. It’s not like we have a park in the community.”

It’s true that—besides a small parklet on 10th and Race installed in 2015—this plaza is the only public space in Chinatown. In 2010, the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (at which Yeung is the Director of Planning) renovated the plaza. Its location between the Chinatown and Callowhill neighborhoods showed potential to be a thriving public space, but the plaza hasn’t been attracting much concentrated use.

“Public space itself isn’t necessarily the solution to a lot of our urban issues,” Yeung said. “We want public spaces to be democratic spaces, we project values onto those spaces, we assume community-building will naturally happen and they will attract diverse users, but that’s not a given.”

There are several deterrents to actively hanging out at the plaza, including minimal shade and few areas to sit—many of which are often occupied by people sleeping on the benches. There are lights strung up on the pergolas, but they don’t get turned on at night. By providing amenities like additional seating, tents for shade, and floodlights to illuminate the plaza when the sun goes down, Yeung allows people to relax at the plaza more comfortably and for longer durations of time—that’s significant because Chinatown’s identity is more than just the businesses and individual residents in it. There needs to be public space where residents come together as a community and for passersby to have the chance to interact. The 10th Street Thursdays, according to Gerry Wang, “feels very Asian” and she appreciates the mix of neighbors and those who just pass through.

The 10th Street Thursdays pop-up is a form of creative placemaking that animates the plaza and aims to create meaningful opportunities for neighbors take ownership of and benefit from the space. The Thursday evening events will continue through August. But Yeung hopes that the pop-ups will set an example for what is possible for this space and others in Philadelphia with a limited budget, a fleet of invested volunteers from the community, and culturally-appropriate programming. “This is important as the city looks to public space and recreational opportunities as ways to equalize our neighborhoods,” she said.