Councilmember Christopher Marte is pushing for legislation that would keep the language of Chinatown in the streets.
Dubbed the “Keep Chinatown on the map” bill, the push comes after a New York Times report that bilingual street signs have been replaced with English-only signs. Marte and supporters argue that the loss of these signs not only make it more difficult for non-English speakers to navigate their own neighborhood, but it also causes Chinatown to vanish from the maps.
“We have to stop that,” Marte said at a press conference on May 4. “What we have seen in the past decade is that they have taken down 155 bilingual signs and now in Chinatown we only have around 100. We are going to change that.”
