CBH Talk | 10 Years After Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy hit New York City on October 29, 2012. Over the course of 48 hours ferocious wind, rain, and water left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without power, damaged the city’s critical infrastructure, displaced thousands of residents, and put innumerable city dwellers in vulnerable and dangerous positions with limited access to food, drinking water, healthcare, and critical services.
NYC’s coastal areas – from the Rockaways to Lower Manhattan – vary widely in their wealth and access to financial resources. We look back at these 10 years since Sandy’s wake-up call with three experts – Eddie Bautista, Executive Director of NYC Environmental Justice Alliance; Ron Shiffman, co-founder of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development; and Thaddeus Pawlowski, managing director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University – who reflect on resource allocation, the role of community involvement, and whether the city has met the challenge of providing fair and equal protections in response to climate change. Their conversation is moderated by Ellen Neises, executive director of PennPraxis.
The program begins with a personal Sandy story from Rockaway resident and photographer Larry Racioppo who documented the impact of Sandy on his home and neighborhood. He will share his memories and images in a brief first-person account.
Image: Damaged House, Beach and 131st Street, by Larry Racioppo
This program is presented in partnership with Pratt Graduate Center for
Planning and the Environment.
Participants
Eddie Bautista is the Executive Director of NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. An award-winning community organizer and urban planner, Eddie was previously Director of the Mayor’s Office of City Legislative Affairs where he spearheaded efforts to pass several major pieces of legislation, including the City’s 20-year landmark Solid Waste Management Plan which relied for the first time on principles of environmental justice and borough equity; the creation of the first municipal brownfields remediation office in the nation; the required retrofit of all diesel-powered school buses to reduce air pollution in bus cabins; and the Greater Greener Buildings Plan, the nation’s first comprehensive package of legislation aimed at improving energy efficiency for large scale buildings. Earlier, Eddie was the Director of Community Planning for NY Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI). He is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture’s Graduate Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development.
Ellen Neises is a Registered Landscape Architect and the executive director of PennPraxis, the nonprofit center for applied research and design practice at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Ellen’s practice focuses on physical and policy design for climate action at many scales, and public projects that advance economic development, water management, and community life. Ellen co-led the PennDesign / OLIN / Point CDC team’s work on Hunts Point Lifelines, a winning entry in the Rebuild by Design competition, and co-led the Port / RANGE team’s effort to increase regional resilience through new reciprocal exchanges between cities and the rural highlands in metropolitan New York as part of the Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Plan. She collaborates with the Ramapough Lenape Turtle Clan, Philly Thrive, and other environmental justice leaders on their community-led planning, preservation and design projects. Prior to Penn, Ellen was an associate partner at James Corner Field Operations for 9 years, where she led work on Fresh Kills Parkland, Muscota Marsh on the Harlem River, and other projects.
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Thaddeus Pawlowski is the managing director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University, where he also teaches urban planning and urban design. Before co-founding CRCL, he worked for 15 years in New York City government: planning for future disasters at NYC Emergency Management, working on neighborhood resilience and climate adaptation at NYC Planning, and rebuilding from Hurricane Sandy with the Mayor's Office of Housing Recovery. Trained as an architect and recipient of the Harvard Loeb Fellowship, he has sought to use the tools of design to help communities and ecosystems around the world adapt to climate change.
Larry Racioppo is a photographer who has been documenting New York City since 1971. From 1989 to 2011 he was the official photographer for NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development where he chronicled the city’s rebuilding of distressed neighborhoods. A resident of Rockaway, Racioppo documented the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from the personal perspective of one who lives in the neighborhood. This work became the project, Larry’s Sandy Diary, which was featured in the Museum of the City of New York’s 2013 exhibition Rising Waters. Racioppo’s photographs are held in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York, The Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, El Museo del Barrio, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. His most recent books are Coney Island Baby, B-Ball NYC and Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971–1983.
Ron Shiffman is a city planner with over 60 years of experience in providing architectural, planning, community economic development and sustainable development assistance to community-based groups in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. In 1964 he co-founded the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development [PICCED], which is today the oldest continuously operated university-based community design and development center in the United States. He is recognized as one of the founders of the community-based development movement as well as the community design movement in America. Shiffman has been a member of an array of housing and economic development organizations, including the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board [UHAB] and the Community Service Society in New York City, and the Center for Community Change and the National Association of Neighborhoods on a national level. In 1976, while director of the Pratt Center he joined with UHAB and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development to launch City Limits magazine.
Shiffman was appointed to the New York City Planning Commission by Mayor David Dinkins and served on the Planning Commission from 1990-1996. He served as President of the Salzburg Congress on Urban Planning and Development from 1996-2000, an international organization of architects, planners, and development practitioners. He has also served as a consultant to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Ford Foundation on national and global community-based planning, design, environmental and development initiatives. After the fall of apartheid, he was a founding board member of Shared Interest, an organization that guarantees micro-loans for black entrepreneurial economic development enterprises in South Africa. Shiffman was a founding member of the Center for the Living City, an entity that promotes the teaching and ideas of Jane Jacobs and of the racial justice non-profit the Center for Social Inclusion, which later merged with Race Forward. He continues to serve on all three of these boards.
In 1998, Shiffman received the Architects, Designers, Planners for Social Responsibility’s Lewis Mumford Award for Peace, Development and Environment. In 2012, Shiffman was awarded the Jane Jacobs medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Rockefeller Foundation, and the following year he won the Planning Pioneer Award from the American Planning Association.
Shiffman is Emeritus Professor in the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment and Professor Emeritus at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture where he has taught since the late 60’s and where he chaired the Department of City and Regional Planning from 1991 to 1999. He has helped to weave racial, economic and environmental justice issues and participatory planning processes into the courses, making Pratt’s program an early proponent of what many today refer to as the decolonization of planning pedagogy.
For all indoor Center for Brooklyn History and BPL Presents programs, guests are encouraged to wear masks. In-person capacity is limited and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Hurricane Sandy hit New York City on October 29, 2012. Over the course of 48 hours ferocious wind, rain, and water left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without power, damaged the city’s critical infrastructure, displaced thousands of residents, and put innumerable city dwellers in vulnerable and dangerous positions with limited access to food, drinking water, healthcare, and critical services.
NYC’s coastal areas – from the Rockaways to Lower Manhattan – vary widely in their wealth and access to financial resources. We look back at these 10 years since Sandy’s wake-up call with three experts – Eddie Bautista, Executive Director of NYC Environmental Justice Alliance; Ron Shiffman, co-founder of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development; and Thaddeus Pawlowski, managing director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University – who reflect on resource allocation, the role of community involvement, and whether the city has met the challenge of providing fair and equal protections in response to climate change. Their conversation is moderated by Ellen Neises, executive director of PennPraxis.
The program begins with a personal Sandy story from Rockaway resident and photographer Larry Racioppo who documented the impact of Sandy on his home and neighborhood. He will share his memories and images in a brief first-person account.
Image: Damaged House, Beach and 131st Street, by Larry Racioppo
This program is presented in partnership with Pratt Graduate Center for
Planning and the Environment.
Participants
Eddie Bautista is the Executive Director of NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. An award-winning community organizer and urban planner, Eddie was previously Director of the Mayor’s Office of City Legislative Affairs where he spearheaded efforts to pass several major pieces of legislation, including the City’s 20-year landmark Solid Waste Management Plan which relied for the first time on principles of environmental justice and borough equity; the creation of the first municipal brownfields remediation office in the nation; the required retrofit of all diesel-powered school buses to reduce air pollution in bus cabins; and the Greater Greener Buildings Plan, the nation’s first comprehensive package of legislation aimed at improving energy efficiency for large scale buildings. Earlier, Eddie was the Director of Community Planning for NY Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI). He is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture’s Graduate Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development.
Ellen Neises is a Registered Landscape Architect and the executive director of PennPraxis, the nonprofit center for applied research and design practice at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Ellen’s practice focuses on physical and policy design for climate action at many scales, and public projects that advance economic development, water management, and community life. Ellen co-led the PennDesign / OLIN / Point CDC team’s work on Hunts Point Lifelines, a winning entry in the Rebuild by Design competition, and co-led the Port / RANGE team’s effort to increase regional resilience through new reciprocal exchanges between cities and the rural highlands in metropolitan New York as part of the Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Plan. She collaborates with the Ramapough Lenape Turtle Clan, Philly Thrive, and other environmental justice leaders on their community-led planning, preservation and design projects. Prior to Penn, Ellen was an associate partner at James Corner Field Operations for 9 years, where she led work on Fresh Kills Parkland, Muscota Marsh on the Harlem River, and other projects.
Thaddeus Pawlowski is the managing director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University, where he also teaches urban planning and urban design. Before co-founding CRCL, he worked for 15 years in New York City government: planning for future disasters at NYC Emergency Management, working on neighborhood resilience and climate adaptation at NYC Planning, and rebuilding from Hurricane Sandy with the Mayor's Office of Housing Recovery. Trained as an architect and recipient of the Harvard Loeb Fellowship, he has sought to use the tools of design to help communities and ecosystems around the world adapt to climate change.
Larry Racioppo is a photographer who has been documenting New York City since 1971. From 1989 to 2011 he was the official photographer for NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development where he chronicled the city’s rebuilding of distressed neighborhoods. A resident of Rockaway, Racioppo documented the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from the personal perspective of one who lives in the neighborhood. This work became the project, Larry’s Sandy Diary, which was featured in the Museum of the City of New York’s 2013 exhibition Rising Waters. Racioppo’s photographs are held in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York, The Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, El Museo del Barrio, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. His most recent books are Coney Island Baby, B-Ball NYC and Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971–1983.
Ron Shiffman is a city planner with over 60 years of experience in providing architectural, planning, community economic development and sustainable development assistance to community-based groups in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. In 1964 he co-founded the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development [PICCED], which is today the oldest continuously operated university-based community design and development center in the United States. He is recognized as one of the founders of the community-based development movement as well as the community design movement in America. Shiffman has been a member of an array of housing and economic development organizations, including the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board [UHAB] and the Community Service Society in New York City, and the Center for Community Change and the National Association of Neighborhoods on a national level. In 1976, while director of the Pratt Center he joined with UHAB and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development to launch City Limits magazine.
Shiffman was appointed to the New York City Planning Commission by Mayor David Dinkins and served on the Planning Commission from 1990-1996. He served as President of the Salzburg Congress on Urban Planning and Development from 1996-2000, an international organization of architects, planners, and development practitioners. He has also served as a consultant to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Ford Foundation on national and global community-based planning, design, environmental and development initiatives. After the fall of apartheid, he was a founding board member of Shared Interest, an organization that guarantees micro-loans for black entrepreneurial economic development enterprises in South Africa. Shiffman was a founding member of the Center for the Living City, an entity that promotes the teaching and ideas of Jane Jacobs and of the racial justice non-profit the Center for Social Inclusion, which later merged with Race Forward. He continues to serve on all three of these boards.
In 1998, Shiffman received the Architects, Designers, Planners for Social Responsibility’s Lewis Mumford Award for Peace, Development and Environment. In 2012, Shiffman was awarded the Jane Jacobs medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Rockefeller Foundation, and the following year he won the Planning Pioneer Award from the American Planning Association.
Shiffman is Emeritus Professor in the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment and Professor Emeritus at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture where he has taught since the late 60’s and where he chaired the Department of City and Regional Planning from 1991 to 1999. He has helped to weave racial, economic and environmental justice issues and participatory planning processes into the courses, making Pratt’s program an early proponent of what many today refer to as the decolonization of planning pedagogy.
For all indoor Center for Brooklyn History and BPL Presents programs, guests are encouraged to wear masks. In-person capacity is limited and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Brooklyn Public Library - Center for Brooklyn History MM/DD/YYYY 60