CUNY Center for Systems and Community Design

All over New York, small storefront clinics and big-name university labs alike lean on systems‑level thinking to tackle community health and design challenges. At 55 West 125th Street on the eighth floor they’ve carved out a dedicated research hub, the CUNY Center for Systems and Community Design, that brings those same ideas into sharper focus.

Group model building sessions share space with large-scale data visualization projects, while community advisory boards sit down alongside computational modelers to co-produce tools that actually get used. Each project lands somewhere between theory and on‑the‑ground impact, whether for public health agencies, housing nonprofits, or workforce development coalitions further north and east.

Mornings often start with neighborhood partners dropping off fresh GIS layers collected overnight, ready to be folded into tomorrow’s simulation runs. The team publishes software toolkits, community mapping workflows, and policy briefs—most of it publicly available once they’ve scrubbed sensitive data—so others can adapt their methods without reinventing the wheel.

The elevator deposits you right inside Suite 801 at 55 W 125th St, New York, NY 10027; when the door opens you’re already midsummer in Harlem. To coordinate a visit, dial (646) 364-0263 during business hours or pull up the directions before you head out.