How We Work

The Pratt Center for Community Development brings together professionals, educators, and graduate students from the fields of architecture, urban planning, community organizing, economic development, and public policy to collaborate with community-based partners and build sustainable and successful city neighborhoods.

We put the following practices to work for neighborhoods:

Community-Based Planning

Pratt Center staff work with residents, business owners, and other neighborhood stakeholders to develop plans that reflect a consensus vision for a community’s future. Areas of focus include environmental sustainability, economic development, affordable housing, and retail services, and open space.

Technical Assistance

We help organizations, businesses, and individuals access resources to become more environmentally sustainable and economically successful. We offer expertise and referrals in securing energy efficiency upgrades for buildings, incentives for industrial businesses, and research and mapping for community-based advocacy.

Issue Organizing

The Pratt Center helps bring together city- and statewide advocacy coalitions to advance policies that improve economic opportunity, the built environment, and quality of life in New York City neighborhoods. Our approach mobilizes participants to act on their neighborhood-level concerns in concert with other community-based groups to achieve legislative and programmatic objectives.

Policy Research

Pratt Center reports and issue briefs provide a factual foundation for the work of the Pratt Center and community partners and educate the public on emerging issues affecting urban development. We and others apply our research findings to policy problems in New York City and at the national level.

Educational Collaboration

Collaboration with students and faculty from Pratt Institute’s Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development is an integral part of the Pratt Center’s work. Working with Pratt Institute faculty and Pratt Center staff, graduate students enrolled in studio courses in city and regional planning, historic preservation, environmental systems management, and facilities management provide research, technical assistance, mapping, and other services for Pratt Center clients.

Each academic year, the Pratt Center invites Pratt Center Fellows, a select group of Pratt Institute planning and architecture students, to work in our office and in New York City neighborhoods on research, planning, design, and other projects.