Community Development Clinic

1.5 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The Community Development Clinic is designed to offer Georgetown McDonough students an opportunity to understand how the built environment can work for the betterment of our society through a project-based approach that involves local municipalities. It may be difficult to understand given our Washington, DC home, but many local municipalities are overwhelmed with real estate assets that have physically degraded due in large part to changing economic realities of our global environment. These buildings once served their local community as a home for people and businesses, but are now only relics of a proud past. Communities across the world, especially small to medium-sized ones, lack the resources and capabilities to develop and execute multi-faceted economic development strategies. Many of these economic developers wear multiple hats in their communities, from actual or de facto planning directors to community booster. As a result, public assets remain underutilized and therefore public revenues. This course is specifically designed to function as a clinical environment where students spend a large percentage of their course time actively engaged in a consulting project with a local municipality. The nature of the projects will range, but the course endeavors to offer real estate-based solutions to problems of the municipality’s built environment. Students will spend meaningful time on-site with municipal personnel and receive direct oversight and instruction by Steers Center faculty.