PICCED Overview

The Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED) has been in service to the community for nearly forty years. It was established in 1963 to create a partnership between Pratt Institute's Department of City and Regional Planning and local organizations that were struggling to address issues of urban deterioration and poverty. PICCED grew out of the Institute's belief that an integral part of its mission as an urban university was to provide community-based organizations, in low-income neighborhoods throughout New York City, with access to the technical resources of its faculty, staff, and students.

As the oldest university-based advocacy planning organization in the country, PICCED's mission is to enhance the capacity of low- and moderate-income communities to develop innovative solutions to the physical, social, and economic challenges facing them. PICCED carries out this mission through three interrelated program areas:

� Technical Assistance (including planning and architectural services)
� Training and Education
� Public Policy Analysis and Advocacy

Since 1975, when the Pratt Planning and Architectural Collaborative (PPAC) was formed as a separate but related entity of PICCED, the Center has been providing comprehensive architectural services to community groups that otherwise would not have access to the professional services needed to develop low-income and special needs housing, day care centers, primary health care facilities, arts and cultural centers, and alternative public schools.

Today, PICCED's multidisciplinary staff pursues its mission through direct technical assistance in neighborhood planning, financial packaging, design and construction of housing and community facilities, as well as through policy research and advocacy, and an array of training and organization capacity building programs. However, our most valuable and enduring contribution may be the care and effort we have taken to build and enhance the capacity of the neighborhood groups we work with, providing the tools they need to develop projects on their own. In so doing, these groups help shape the futures of the communities they serve.

Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED)
379 DeKalb Ave., 2nd Fl.
Brooklyn, NY 11205
718-636-3486
718-636-3709 (fax)

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[ Education/Training | Technical Assistance | Policy/Advocacy | Resources ]

This page copyright February, 1997, Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED).

Questions, comments, or suggestions should be sent to Mannix Gordon