Neighborhoods

Instructions for Immigrant Neighborhoods Projects

Students who choose this assignment have decided to learn about a specific "immigrant" or ethnic neighborhood. While this may sound a little like a tall order, this is New York City and nearly every neighborhood of New York City has at some time been home to immigrant groups! 

This immigrant neighborhood project is purposely broad and allows students freedom to decide how to they want to present their work to us. The underlying goal is that students learn (and teach us) about their chosen neighborhood. Students may want to imagine that they are writing a guide to neighborhood addressed to  someone who doesn't know anything about the neighborhood. However, this may not just be a travel guide to the neighborhood with a listing of great places to eat and drink! This is still a semester project! 

In "regular" times, I would likely ask students to go out and do some fieldwork. However, given the year we've had and despite the fact that New York is beginning to reopen, I am still reluctant to suggest that students make field visits to their chosen neighborhoods. Instead, I leave that up to each individual student.

At the very least, this project must include the following

1. A clear delineation of the boundaries of the neighborhood.
• you may want to start by just Googling "boundaries of "your chosen neighborhood"" to see how others define your neighborhood
• to locate boundaries and data about a neighborhood, visit NYC Population FactFinder
2. A general history of the neighborhood-- what immigrant settled there? Why did they leave?
3. Who lives there now? (demographics)
• Again, you may want to visit NYC Population FactFinder or
• Learn to get information directly from the Census by watching the videos at US Census Data Gems

After those three topics are covered, only then, may students add topics such as great places to visit, eat, and drink. 😀

You may want to visit the following sites produced by Macauley Honors Students to get some idea of what you may want to present: 

• MHC - 57th Street 
• MHC - Williamsburg
• MHC - Fort Greene
• MHC - The Irish

One or Multiple Posts

Of course your project need not be nearly as detailed as those sites-- those students spent an entire 15 weeks building these websites! Instead, students may want to contribute several (2-4) posts covering different topics of their neighborhoods-- for example, 

• one post with a map and description of the neighborhood, 
• a second post with the history of the neighborhood, 
• a third post on current demographics, and
• a forth post about places to eat. etc. 
• For each post, make sure to include the label "neighborhood" and a label with the neighborhood name so that the multiple posts can be grouped together to form a unified project. 

Again, this assignment is purposely broadly-defined. Students may want to make recordings or upload videos of a neighborhood walk about. Here's an example of a short walking tour of Harlem (again, I don't expect any students to do something this long and detailed!).

Steps for Submitting the Assignment:

1. Return to Bb.
2. Choose "Semester Assignment"
3. provide a link to your post(s).
4. Submit the assignment.