Marshall Square Plaza Project

The Marshall Square Plaza Project reimagines Marshall Boulevard as a living civic landscape shaped by culture, memory, ecology, and everyday life. Rooted in the traditions of the Mexican plaza, paseo, and calzada, the project positions public space as a site of gathering, celebration, commerce, ritual, and collective stewardship within the neighborhoods of Little Village, Marshall Square, and North Lawndale.
Rather than imposing a fixed design, the project advances a community-authored urban landscape framework. Through deep listening, collaborative workshops, and cultural fluency, shared values are translated into spatial principles that can guide future investment, programming, and care. Landscape is understood as ancestral and alive—shaped over time through use, memory, and seasonal rhythms.
The proposed framework organizes the boulevard as a continuous north–south narrative informed by Mesoamerican geomorphologies. Northern segments draw from mountainous landscapes and ceremonial ascent, central areas evoke valleys and everyday social life shaped by water and agriculture, and southern reaches reference cenotes and porous, flood-adaptive terrains. Together, these conditions support a diversity of public spaces, including plazas, markets, gardens, performance areas, and ecological landscapes.
Conceptual visualizations serve as tools for dialogue rather than prescriptions, helping communities, artists, and partners imagine possibilities while keeping the framework flexible and open-ended. The project emphasizes transformative preservation, collective stewardship, and intangible design decisions grounded in trust, pacing, and shared authorship.
Marshall Square Plaza positions Little Village as a leader in culturally grounded public space-making—where landscape becomes a medium for continuity, resilience, and joyful urban futures.