Pratt Center for Community Development

The Pratt Center is the oldest university-based advocacy planning and technical assistance organization in the United States. Located in Brooklyn, NY and part of Pratt Institute, Pratt Center leverages professional skills and practical experience in the areas of community organizing, policy advocacy, planning and technical assistance to support community-based organizations and small businesses in their efforts to improve neighborhood quality of life and to develop replicable models for equitable, sustainable community development.

Founded in 1964 with a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Pratt Center's original goal was to create a partnership between Pratt Institute’s planning department and local New York organizations eager to address issues of urban deterioration and poverty. In 1963, Pratt Institute Department of City and Regional Planning chair George Raymond set out to educate New Yorkers about how urban planning, done right, can build better neighborhoods. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund sponsored a Community Education Program at Pratt Institute to "help community groups in New York City obtain a basic understanding of planning theory and the political and economic realities of housing and urban renewal programs, as well as achieve a realistic appraisal of what citizens can rightfully expect of government in these several fields." Raymond and a Pratt Institute planning student named Ron Shiffman began working with a group of ministers on a study of Bedford-Stuyvesant, anticipating a city urban renewal program planned for part of the area. The Pratt Center's work with central Brooklyn organizations to develop a comprehensive plan to rebuild Bedford-Stuyvesant through job training and other economic development programs became the model for the Ford Foundation and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's project to create community development corporations, in New York City and across the country, to contend with urban poverty, decaying housing and disinvestment.

One of the Pratt Center's first major projects was to help the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council evaluate the impact of a proposed urban renewal plan on their neighborhood. The planning model which grew out of that endeavor integrated housing, economic, and social planning considerations. This effort attracted the attention of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and led to the establishment of one of the first community development corporations (CDCs) in the country - the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. In addition to providing planning and support for Restoration, the Pratt Center continued to play an active role in Bedford-Stuyvestant through the 1960s by operating the Central Brooklyn Neighborhood College which offered training and education for local residents, especially African-Americans and Latinos who had either dropped out of high school or lacked access to higher education.

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