Click here to view the second installment of the Investing in America short-form video series. For Mandarin subtitles, see caption options.
WASHINGTON – Today, as part of Infrastructure Week and during Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the U.S. Department of Transportation released the second installment of its “Investing in America” video series, focused on the Chinatown Stitch project in Philadelphia. The Chinatown Stitch project received $159 million from the Biden-Harris Administration to cap the Vine Street Expressway with greenspace and implement other improvements – addressing historic inequities, reconnecting the Chinatown community, and improving quality of life.
This video features interviews from leaders in the neighborhood including Cecilia Moy Yep, known as the godmother of Chinatown. The video tells the history of the Chinatown Stitch project going back to the mid-1960s. The video is available in closed captioning for English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
Since its inception in the 1960s, Philadelphia’s Vine Street Expressway project represented a threat to Chinatown, which has been home to the Chinese immigrant community since the mid-1800s. By the time it was completed in the 1990s, the expressway had replaced significant portions of the neighborhood and displaced residents and businesses.
Funding for the Chinatown Stitch is part of the Reconnecting Neighborhoods and Communities (RCN) program and was announced as part of the recent round of $3.3 billion in grants, which funded 132 projects in more than 40 states. The grant program aims to rebuild and repair communities that were cut off or harmed by transportation infrastructure decisions of the past. This grant and others received under RCN will help advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 goal of directing “40 percent of the overall benefits” of federal investments to disadvantaged communities such as Chinatown.
Watch U.S. Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s exclusive interview previewing the “Investing in America: Chinatown Stitch” video on MSNBC here. The first video in the series, released in March, highlighted the Blatnik Bridge which connects Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. That video can be viewed here.