COMMUNITY PORTRAITS

COMMUNITY IDENTIFICATION ASSIGNMENT #1

DUE IN SESSION #2

This assignment requires you to Identify the geographical community that you will use as the focus of your work for the Community Portraits or Public and Community Information-Gathering competency. It also requires you to obtain some very basic information about the legal status of the community and where it is located.

A. Select a geographical community of interest to you. The community should have a population between about 10,000 and 50,000. This is just a guideline; you do not need to know the exact population at this point. The community may be a town or small city with a population in this range, such as Stoughton, Arlington or Chelsea. Or it may be a recognized neighborhood within a larger city, such as West Roxbury, East Somerville, or Newton Corner.

B. Find out whether the community is a town or a city or a neighborhood within a larger city or town. (If it is a neighborhood, which city or town is it a part of?). If you don't know whether it is a city or town or neighborhood, then you can find out by contacting the local city or town government. Or perhaps you can find out by searching the Internet For example, the State government website has basic info about every city and town in the Commonwealth (www.state.ma.us/dhcd/, or www.magnet.state.ma.us/cc/), and the Boston government website has some info about neighborhoods in the city (www.ci.boston.ma.us/neighborhoods).

C. Find out the county in which the community is located. If you don't know this, you can find out from the same sources as for step B above.

D. Find out the names of all of the places that surround and border the community and the directions of each of these places. Each of these places will be a city, a town, a neighborhood, or a body of water. To figure this out you will need to look a map that shows the community, its boundaries, and all of the surrounding places; the map will also need to show directions (or at least which direction is north). Or you may find this info on the Internet.

E. Find out the approximate distance and direction from the center of the community to downtown Boston. To figure this out you will need to look at a map. Or, once again you may find this info on the Internet, as above.

F. Write a paragraph, with complete sentences and with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation, containing ALL of the following information about the community:

1. the name of the community

2. whether it is a city, a town, or a neighborhood within a larger city or town (and if so, what is the larger city or town) 3. which county it is located in

4. what it is bordered by in each direction (name the cities, towns, neighborhoods, or bodies of water, as relevant, and give the direction of each)

5. the approximate distance and direction in relation to downtown Boston.

For example, a student choosing Hull identified and located it as follows:

The Town of Hull is located in the County of Plymouth... jutting out into the ocean north of Hingham and Cohasset. It is bordered on the west by Hingham Bay and on the north and east by Massachusetts Bay. It is 20 miles southeast of Boston.

Be sure to write in complete sentences. The assignment should be typed or handwritten neatly and clearly. Be sure to include all of the information that is required. Do not include information that is not asked for as part of this assignment.