Week 11: Finishing the Public Plaza Study and the Interview Surveys at Forsyth Street

Hi everyone!

On Sunday, I finished the Public Plaza User Interview Surveys. In total, we collected 136 surveys from Chinatown residents and visitors. A common sentiment was a strong desire for more security, better lighting, and to reduce homelessness in the neighborhood. Many strongly believe that public safety is key to making residents feel safe and a necessity in order for the neighborhood to flourish. Public spaces are essential for residents and visitors and impact the commercial health and perception of a neighborhood. This survey was one of my favorites of this internship – I enjoyed having so many eager residents come up to our table to be interviewed, sharing their experiences and opinions on the Public Plaza, the street vendors on Forsyth Street, and their lives in the neighborhood.

On Sunday and Tuesday, I completed my Public Plaza data collection for the movement and stationary surveys. Since that was the final amount of surveying needed for the Commercial District Needs Assessment, we can finally start to sort through the data and the report draft can start to be drafted. Although the Commercial District Needs Assessment for Manhattan’s Chinatown will be released well after I finish my senior project, I encourage everyone who reads my weekly postings to check it out when it is released! It will be on the NYC Small Business Services website under the collection of Commercial District Needs Assessments for neighborhoods in our city.

Now in regards to what I did for the remainder of the week, I started creating my presentation slides and drafting my essay that I will submit to my senior project advisor. The culmination of all my hard work over these last few weeks will be displayed next week at the Senior Project Showcase. I will be presenting my project, The Commercial Health of New York City’s Manhattan Chinatown, at 3:00 PM on June 16th at the auditorium at BASIS. If you can make it, I look forward to sharing a recap of my research experience, my findings, and answering my research question where I pondered the strengths and struggles of the businesses of Manhattan’s Chinatown.

As always, thank you for reading and I hope to see you in person for my presentation!