Fishtown Kensington Vision Plan
2023 / Philadelphia PA
OFF CENTER PLANNING
The Fishtown Kensington Area Business Improvement District (FKABID) commissioned this Vision Plan for the FK district in 2020. Situated in northeastern Philadelphia between Northern Liberties and Port Richmond, the neighborhood’s unique fabric brings together arts, culture, nightlife, food, music, and business communities with a reputation for innovation and leadership, drawing visitors and attention from across the city and beyond. With intersections as a centering concept, the plan defines a strategic roadmap and companion toolkit to flexibly impact the district with tactical improvements as well as larger scale interventions.
FROM CORRIDORS TO INTERSECTIONS
The FK District includes businesses along the North Front, Frankford, and East Girard corridors. The urban grid rotates from a primarily rectilinear geometry to the west of Front Street to an off-axis grid oriented toward the Delaware River to the east. Many FK district intersections include three, four or even five streets converging in dynamic and whimsical ways. This plan seeks to shift focus from corridors to intersections, highlighting them as micro communities, gathering points, wayfinding devices, and social connectors, and further emphasizing the unique identity of the FK district’s existing fabric.
TOOLS OF ENGAGEMENT
Local business owners are on-the-ground experts on existing challenges and possibilities for directing future investment. Three intersections with diverse spatial conditions (Front and Girard, Front and Cecil B Moore and Frankford and Lehigh) were identified to test drive intersection workshops, bringing together communities of business owners, neighborhood stakeholders, and city representatives to discuss challenges, possibilities, and priorities for future projects. Community stakeholder workshops informed the development of a toolkit of deployable intersection investment strategies. At Front and Cecil B Moore, an underused knuckle of street asphalt in front of an existing bar and streetery was transformed into a new public plaza featuring a graphic ground-painted mural and an edge treatment of Better Barriers, developed in partnership with local community-based fabricators Tiny WPA.
