During my internship with Interboro, under current GSD faculty Daniel D’Oca, I worked on the Made in Midtown study, a joint effort between the Design Trust for Public Space and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). In addition to helping create the maps you see on the right, I visited and interviewed owners and operators of businesses taking advatage of the district’ s protecive zoning laws.

At the time of the project, city officials in Manhattan were preparing to rezone the famous Garment District in Midtown, removing all protections for fashion manufacturing. Our study contributed to a successful effort to preserve the district, demonstrating its role as a thriving innovation incubator that is both economically significant and crucial to the city’s identity as a global fashion capital. I went on to use this study as a point of departure for my senior thesis at MICA, further researching economies based on agglomeration and innovation.