Parcel 12 Campaign

The Chinatown community visioning exercise for Parcel 12 furthers the mission of the Chinatown Master Plan 2010, which identified Parcel 12 as a priority development site for affordable housing. The Plan recognized that affordable housing is the lifeline that preserves the core Chinatown community of working-class, Asian immigrant households. In light of growing demand for affordable housing caused by recent displacement. Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) launched the Parcel 12 community visioning in July 2015 with co-sponsorship from the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC), Chinatown Main Street, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), Chinatown Community Land Trust (CCLT), Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), and Chinatown Resident Association (CRA).

Many thanks to our A‐VOYCE youth who were instrumental to the Parcel 12 Chinatown community visioning campaign! We would like to highlight our Chinatown youth planning interns who helped lead this campaign and assisted in the data analysis that went into our final report.

Yanjing

I am a planning intern at ACDC working with the community planner Debbie Chen on engaging my community of Chinatown and creating a healthy community in Chinatown. Parcel 12 is one of the few remaining undeveloped properties in Chinatown. I hope to help turn this space into a useful and meaningful place in the community by building affordable housing, a local grocery store, and more. For the Parcel 12 community visioning project we held many workshops, such as design charrettes that let the residents create their own model of a building after explaining to them the building process and costs. After we collected the community’s many opinions and visions we analyzed and submitted them in a report. Even though the process took a long  me I hope that we can really improve the community.

zi

 I was a planning intern at ACDC, and worked to engage the community in the planning of building affordable housing in Chinatown to fight displacement of Chinatown residents who are being priced out of their homes. My work on the Parcel 12 project involved engaging the community. Along with different teams, I helped facilitate numerous edible charrettes and other workshops. I also surveyed Chinatown community members on what they would like to see on Parcel 12, as well as compiled and analyzed the data. To me, the Parcel 12 campaign represents the voices of the many people who live in and care for Chinatown. Boston's Chinatown is where I have spent almost half of my life; I am doing all I can to preserve this home of mine.

Billy

As one of the youth planning interns working on the campaign, I assisted in ACDC’s efforts for stabilizing and developing new plans of land use in Chinatown for the community. Parcel 12 had been an effort running for many months. First task of the Parcel 12 process was to gather community opinions. We hosted workshops that allowed people to build their own Parcel 12, with blocks of foam representing the eventual building. With the results from community and resident engagement, we helped create a report on the Chinatown community vision for Parcel 12. We analyzed the results of our engagement and put together suggestions for the usage of Parcel 12, as well as created graphs to visually showcase our analysis.

Many thanks to Resident and Community Engagement Coordinator May Lui for her relentless organizing efforts throughout the campaign, as well to Development & Communications Manager Christine Nguyen for her compelling photography, design, and copy editing. For questions on the report please contact the author Community Planner Debbie Chen at debbie.chen@asiancdc.org.

Facilitated by ACDC and co‐sponsored by CPA, Chinatown Main Street Association, BCNC, CCBA, CLT, CRA.