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Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has successfully offered A City of Neighborhoods in New York City since 1991, each year focusing on a different neighborhood as a case study. The program is also a national initiative, and the Education Department staff is currently working with partners in Atlanta, GA, Birmingham, AL, and Philadelphia, PA, as well as other communities, to develop customized workshops and courses for youth and adult audiences.

A City of Neighborhoods provides a catalyst for a variety of community stakeholders (architects and teachers, preservationists and the business community, politicians and youth providers) to collaborate on shared community concerns and goals. Participants work with architects, landscape designers, and city planners to develop educational strategies to engage youth in creating proposals for positive community change based on their points of view, an essential component in sustaining desirable neighborhoods into the future.

For educators in particular, the program presents a method for extending the classroom into the community and integrating project-based, experiential learning into any pre-existing curriculum. The program offers practical examples of how to use design and the design process to teach social studies, history, art, civics, language arts, math, and other subject matters, as well as how to provide a platform for a range of after-school activities. It also provides a model for how to involve multiple voices in the evolution of a community and ways to transform a neighborhood into a visual textbook, making any subject area immediately relevant to students by directly relating to their real-life experience.

For students, the workshop offers a forum to evaluate their own experiences in their communities, conduct field research, identify issues of interest and relevance to their peer group, engage in analysis and a design visioning process, develop their own proposals for change, and then share and evaluate their project proposals to a jury of professionals.

A City of Neighborhoods participants come from across the U.S. and around the world, gathering together to learn how to use the built environment to encourage community involvement, pride, and action. The program is offered in New York City and around the country. For more information about the locations and dates of workshops, please check the calendar. For more information about the program, contact the Education Department at 212.849.8380 or edu@si.edu.

A City of Neighborhoods has received support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives, and the MetLife Foundation Museum Connections Program.