“We don’t trust this process!” chanted dozens of protesters as they interrupted a September 16, 2019, community meeting at Aviation High School in Queens. The subject of this public meeting was the potential decking over and development of Sunnyside Yard, a 180-acre rail yard in Queens that is roughly six times larger than Hudson Yards. Previous development proposals for the site, in the 1960s and 1980s, stalled. But the site, relatively close to Manhattan, continues to fuel development dreams. In 2018, the New York City’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) commissioned a master plan from New York firm Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), led by Vishaan Chakrabarti. Responding to public feedback, PAU has refined the plan, allowing the MTA and Amtrak to continue using the yard, while better integrating the potential development with the surrounding neighborhoods.
PAU’s plan envisions a megadevelopment organized around the needs and desires of ordinary people, not corporations and tourists. Attendees ambled by dozens of easel-mounted boards, which showed i…