Highland Falls Neighborhood Case Study: Community, Identity & Change

This project began as a neighborhood case study for Georgia Tech’s Community Dynamics & Engagement course. The assignment called for researching a community and speaking directly with local stakeholders to understand the institutions, relationships, practices, and contemporary issues shaping neighborhood life. I chose Highland Falls, New York, a small Hudson Valley village whose identity and development are closely intertwined with neighboring West Point. Rather than presenting the research as a conventional report, I transformed the case study into an illustrated walking tour in which a fictional guide introduces the viewer to the community through local history, institutions, public spaces, planning documents, everyday practices, and conversations with real community stakeholders. The project combined secondary research, comprehensive-plan review, community observation, and stakeholder interviews to examine themes including historic identity, military-community relationships, downtown revitalization, zoning and development, flooding and infrastructure, informal community networks, and the tension between growth and preservation. The final 22-slide narrative was created in Canva as a complete visual story rather than a traditional presentation. The project went substantially beyond the original assignment requirements and was later shown to subsequent classes as an example of a creative approach to neighborhood research and planning communication.