Dear Chinatown, DC

Washington, D.C.

Through partnership with the 1882 Foundation and the generous support of the 2020 AARP (DC Award) Community Challenge Grant, I worked in collaboration with Megan Lewin-Smith, Throneless Tech, Garima Sharma, Gowri Balasubramaniam and Jelani Byrd to build Dear Chinatown, DC Mapping Project website and corresponding animation to launch the project to local Washington, D.C. audiences.

The Dear Chinatown project compiled the responses and memories generated from last year’s Dear Chinatown, DC poster-making workshops, and corresponding survey activities and built this website as a tool to capture the perspectives of D.C.’s Chinatown from the history and perspectives of its longtime community members. This beta version of the online platform is intended to increase civic engagement and strengthen community identity, particularly amongst the neighborhood’s longtime, aging residents. Rapid development has made the essential social and public infrastructure of everyday life increasingly inaccessible. Advocates can use the tool to help inform urban planning policies and advocate for the inclusion of community priorities in all redevelopment efforts in Chinatown and hopes to inspire similar projects across the District, where these issues continue to persist and impact our neighborhoods more broadly.