Michael Hooper

Michael Hooper is an associate professor of urban planning in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University’s Community Innovation Lab (CIL) in Massachusetts. He has used the film Gaining Ground to teach Advanced Workshop in Public Participation in Urban Planning and Design. As part of the class, students watched both the film and its predecessor, Holding Ground, and visited DSNI a couple of times a week, on average, over the entire term. (Note: If you are interested in a visit, DSNI has a speakers bureau and visitors program that welcomes groups and organizations, provides tours and shares lessons learned. Please contact DSNI at urbanvillage@dsni.org with “speakers bureau request” in the subject line to arrange a visit through the program.

Hooper says the students went to DSNI with great intentions. “But there’s a long history of people from Harvard parachuting in, thinking they can diagnose and solve problems.” He adds: “So initially, at least, the relationship was a bit tense.”

He has used the film to explore the history of DSNI, so his class could gain a deeper understanding of the community. Hooper says many students, even those who are socially engaged, don’t really understand the racial and economic divides that exist in Boston.

Hooper says the more the students learned about the neighborhood, the more engaged they became. Several students continued to visit the area after the design class ended, working with a separate organization attempting to revitalize Uphams Corner in Dorchester.

Other resource materials Hooper has used with the film include the 1994 book Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood, which covers the founding of DSNI in great depth, to provide historical context at the local, neighborhood level. He also has his students read many academic articles to provide more research-based, abstract knowledge, along with professional and popular articles regarding community development.

See Hooper’s syllabus [here].