Vicki Weiner
Community Development
In 2008, the Fitch Foundation awarded a Fitch Mid-Career Research grant to Vicki Weiner. Her project, Historic Preservation and Community Development: Protecting “Place” in Low Income Communities, will develop strategies for imbedding the values and tools of historic preservation into community development activities in New York City’s low-income communities. Using research, case studies, and policy analyses, she will produce a methodology to help community stakeholders embrace neighborhood history and culture as vital components of successful community development and will highlight many community-building methods and tools that historic preservation can offer to low-income communities as they seek broader changes to bring neighborhood improvement and enhancement.
Residents of Bushwick, Brooklyn, participated in a preservation planning workshop with Weiner and her Pratt Institute Historic Preservation students. Workshop activities focused on sharing neighborhood stories and history, and identifying places of past and present importance, and discussing how vacant buildings could be adapted to new uses that serve the community. (Credit: Ege Yildirim)