Affordable 
     Housing
  Development        Competition
    2003

The Students

Mark Wiranowski will receive master's degrees in public policy and urban planning from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, respectively. A member of the Student Coordinating Committee for the 2004 competition, he was a member of the first-place Norfolk Corners team in 2003.

As a member of the Norfolk Corners team, I was mostly involved in finance issues. I was also the person who contacted the Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation to learn about its auto mall.

As a public policy student, I found it interesting to have a hands-on community practitioner role. I think the competition was incredibly valuable for the students, regardless of where they might go with their careers afterwards.

Working closely with the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation gave me a community practitioner's perspective on development. The process involved a lot of talking to residents. The competition threw us into the fire. We had to make the proposal work.

The support that I got from most places was great. I talked to a lot of folks at the state and city level to sort out financing issues. I had a fantastic experience — one that has probably altered my career direction. I've been interested in urban poverty issues in general. Now I think I want to veer more toward physical development because of what I think it can do and the way it can galvanize a neighborhood. I'm talking about housing in particular and maybe more comprehensive neighborhood planning.

Before I started graduate school, I had spent a number of years working with urban youth in at-risk delinquent programs. But after doing that work I felt that I needed a broader community perspective. You could do a fantastic program with youth but end up sending them back to the same community — the same environment.

I wanted to get a higher-altitude look at community issues. This attracted me to public-policy issues and to this competition. In a very tangible way, I realized that physical development serves as a tremendous focal point for community development. It's something community residents respond to and understand. It's also something that the private sector and city government understand and are interested in.

A vacant garage in Dorchester's Norfolk Triangle section.

There's a lot of energy around physical development. I see the potential to address a host of other issues around it, such as equity, community empowerment, and community assets and needs. Physical development could mean housing, but it could also mean a community center, a youth center, or an educational facility. I see physical development and community economic development as an entry point to address a host of neighborhood problems.

I am 100 percent enthusiastic about the competition, and I hope the support continues. I'm really pleased that the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the Boston Foundation, and Citizens' Housing and Planning Association chose to be involved in the competition.

One of the biggest shortfalls in the landscape of Boston issues is tapping into students as a resource. This is a beautiful model for doing that. I've been affected so much that I've volunteered (along with fellow Norfolk Corners team member Susana Williams) to be a competition coordinator next year.