I want to make a project for a place but it's not showing up when I search for it

If you want to make a project that contains observations from a certain area, that area needs to be an iNaturalist Place, which is a geographic boundary saved in iNaturalist's database. Nearly all continents, countries, states and provinces, and county-level areas are iNaturalist Places, but many parks, neighborhoods, cities, etc., are not. 

If you would like to make a project for a specific area that's not an existing iNaturalist Place, you will have to make a new Place, and you can see instructions for doing that here. Once the Place has been created and added to iNaturalist's database, it should show up as an option for your project. 

Note that it can take a few hours for a new Place to appear as an option for a project, so please be patient.