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Outreach and Engagement



La Casa de Don Pedro & Community Meeting Recap

06 March, 2018


               On Tuesday our class visited Newark for the second time, this time to meet with members of both La Casa de Don Pedro as well as the community. It was a great turnout, and we would like to give a big thank you to everyone who joined us, and La Casa for making it possible! During our discussion, Louis Prezeau Jr., Director of Community and Economic Development, as well as a few others at La Casa, provided us with further insight into the current and historical political and social fabric of the Lower Broadway area. Additionally, the community members from the Lower Broadway area voiced their desires and concerns for the neighborhood, as well as some other additional information that will be useful for the next steps of our work. 


Water Resources & Urban Agriculture Meeting

Feb 20, 2018
On February 20th, our studio met with Rosana Da Silva and Meredith Taylor. Rosana, a native to Newark, is a Program Associate for Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program. Her main focus is around green infrastructure in New Jersey’s urban communities. Meredith Taylor is currently a research associate with Rutgers. Prior to working with the university, she developed a hydroponic farming project in Newark. 

The meeting was put in place to further develop our knowledge on Newark, NJ. Given that both of our guests have lived there and/or worked there, we were able to draw parallels to our studio’s inventory on Newark and also learn a few new things. As a studio we marked off things to consider that we identified were important. Those consisted of important landmarks, attractions, vegetation, and the over all image of the city. 

We recognized a lot of the importance was based off of the physical aspect of the city, largely due to our outside look on the city. Because Rosana and Meredith have a different insight of Newark, their major points included infrastructure, the social issues, the environment, and the overall politics. 

Thanks to their experiential knowledge, they were able to identify the structural issues of Newark as a whole which led us to create a structural diagram.

This diagram explains the structure of Newark and how all of its elements work together 

Site Visits Map

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