Josie Steuer-Ingall

Josie Steuer-Ingall (’24) grew up in New York City’s East Village. She spent much of her childhood playing at East River Park in Lower Manhattan. In 2021, the park was razed due to flooding caused by climate change. 

 “Playgrounds and parks were such an important part of my childhood,” Josie recalls. “They gave me a sense of agency […] I think child-centered spaces are integral to cities and to early childhood education as a whole.” Over the summer, Josie found a way to promote this cause. Thanks to Urban Studies and Education Studies grants, she was able to work for Small Development Counts, a non-profit advocating for small-scale, incremental urban revitalization, as well as local property ownership, and homegrown housing. Josie traveled to Detroit, Milwaukee, and South Bend to learn more about creating shared spaces such as parks and playgrounds.

In each city, Josie studied a neighborhood that had experienced decades of disinvestment to determine how residents could work with city governments to acquire property and build local, generational wealth. She identified sites that could be redeveloped as playgrounds and community green spaces, then wrote policy proposals demonstrating how the tax revenue produced by small-scale projects could be reinvested in these child- and family-centered spaces. 

Reflecting on the experience, Josie stated, “I visited neighborhoods where the local land bank has never made a sale to a Black person, even though the post-White Flight populations of these areas—who stuck around and continued to steward their communities when others fled to the suburbs—were almost entirely Black. […] It really reaffirmed for me that researching and learning about alternative development approaches as a means to combat gentrification and build more loving and livable cities is something I want to continue to do in the future. I also hope to take more child development and early childhood education classes during my remaining time at Yale to inform my understanding of the creation and importance of child-centered spaces.”