Year
1994-2025

Client
Dwight Neighborhood

Collaborators
Greater Dwight Development Corporation
Dwight Central Management Team

In the spring of 1995, the Dwight Central Management Team approached Yale’s Neighborhood Partnership Network and the Yale Urban Design Workshop for assistance in developing a neighborhood plan for New Haven’s Dwight, Edgewood, and West River neighborhoods. With its partners, the YUDW organized a four-day community design workshop in September 1995, involving over 250 participants from the neighborhood, public officials, and representatives of partner institutions. Over the following year, the YUDW developed a neighborhood plan based on the charrette findings which was formally adopted by the DCMT.

Since 1995, the neighborhood has accomplished many of the goals that were articulated in the Plan, including concrete achievements such as the formation of the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, which, with design assistance from the YUDW, developed a neighborhood grocery store, a shared community facility in the form of an addition to the neighborhood elementary school, and new day-care center to serve neighborhood families. The YUDW, with associated architects, provided the designs for these two community facilities.

Most importantly, the plan set the neighborhood on a trajectory towards self-reliance, safety, increasing economic and social strength, and heightened community awareness and pride.