Figure WeAct East Harlem Climate Map (to the left) and new East Harlem
Rezoning Map (to the right)
Since its early days, WeAct used participatory techniques in an attempt
to quantify and use methodologically sound techniques in making policy
claims. For instance, they had a long standing alliance with Columbia
University’s School of Public Health in providing research support on
air pollution and its impact on child health (Sze, 2007). This
engagement is 30 years in the making and builds on extensive
community-based planning techniques that consider “communities of
color not as objects of study but rather active collaborators with
researchers and institutions” (185). They consider climate change as an
issue that will exacerbate existing inequalities in planning and
development, therefore they spend years crafting alternative visions for
neighborhoods scheduled to undergo change by the city council. Since
2017, for instance, they engaged residents and associations living and
working on what is perceived to become ‘the ground zero” (Velaverde and
Gandhi, 2019) of East Harlem’s redevelopment plan, that is the area
enclosed between East 124th Street to the South and East 126th Street to
the North, and Madison Avenue and Second Avenue on the West and East.
The plan was drafted after an extensive visioning process, where
charrettes were produced detailing concerns and desires of citizens and
associations around transportation, connectivity and access,
neighborhood amenities and streetscape. The result are 4 goals, 8
strategies and a host of actions, addressing economic and cultural
needs, health and safety and environmental resilience including
stormwater management, trees for shading and solar powered LED lighting
on East 125 St.
5. Spaces of Deliberation in East Harlem: What
Futures?
As seen above, along with event organized by some community groups, the
Rezoning of East Harlem led to opportunities to discuss flood
vulnerability that may not be available otherwise. Yet the issue of
turnout at events planned by the organizations I interviewed is big.
Getting the word out to communities that may be the most impacted by
changes in zoning and by flooding is perceived as challenge due to the
scarce resources that the organizations have to, for instance, leave
flyers, when at times this is one way to reach low income groups.
Organizations largely rely on word of mouth by their existing network,
including official authorities like Parks and Council members, and
mailing lists. Participation is influenced by whether individuals have
the time ‘to be political’ even if they have multiple jobs or none at
all.
Elsewhere other planners and civic groups, expressed the feeling that
deliberation processes organized by official authorities are not
transparent and are driven by interests of powerful lobbies. In a recent
Op-Ed for the Gotham Gazette, long term urban designer and city planner
John West (2019), detailed his concerns for transparency and
responsiveness to citizens in the process of forging a future
Comprehensive Plan for New York City. In a follow up email directed to
all affiliated neighborhood organizations, he lamented that city
authorities and the Mayor engage “in disingenuous political
theater” and then act disregarding the negative impact on neighborhood
residents and small businesses. The current approach towards
citizens “is neither transparent or resident driven rather it is
developer and lobbyist driven”, going as far as declaring that the“Residents are treated to misleading presentations by staffers
who are either not in the know or are ordered to obfuscate and
misdirect”. West is also against the use of “legislative language”
at public hearings which is often undergoes significant changes by
lobbyists and developers that make it “unrecognizable or
unintelligible” to lay publics. West advocates for a wide spread
distribution of the exact scope and detail of any such plan and the
exact language that will be used to put a plan into law, requiring full
disclosure of the political ties with interest groups that any public
official or staff member may have with developers, land owners or their
trade associations or lobbyists but also of campaign contributions or
contributions to officially favored non-profits.
While very desirable for a ‘democracy’ like New York City, this seems
far from achievable under the current political leadership. The
implications of such a statement for issues of coastal flooding is that,
at minimum, the rezoning maps of the city should reflect the actual risk
that people and properties may be exposed to, at best a whole new way of
deliberating around the climate would see groups like WeAct, closely
work to produce evidence-based research with universities and CBs who
have a trusted base of citizens and a large network of agencies to tap
into. A new deliberation process may also ask: which powers and
decisions about climate change and urban development might be delegated
to elected neighborhood councils? For example, we might give
neighborhoods and CBs more power over the sustainable management of
public spaces — sidewalks, street parking, stoplights, the placement
of crossing guards, the organization of trash pickup, street trees,
stormwater, bike racks, parks, public-private plazas. We could also give
residents power to veto egregiously out-of-context buildings, the right
to say no to buildings that require spot rezoning and the right to veto
air-rights transfers that result in an excessive breach of contextual
height limits or veto more developments in the floodplain that may cause
stormwater or coastal surges to flood areas that have benefited from
less resilience measures.
5.1 Concluding Reflections
In this pilot study the focus was on understanding how community groups
describe the exposure and vulnerability to coastal flooding from their
perspective and as representatives of the constituents they work with or
for in East Harlem. East Harlem is a neighborhood like many others in
New York City, with a long history of urban change, migration, community
action (Goldstein, 2017) and now increasing rates climate change
vulnerability. The study was particularly interested in showing how
distributional analyses of who is exposed to coastal flooding and where,
need to be complemented with a procedural justice lens to actually
understand how changes in exposure and impacts of flooding are rooted in
past and present decisions, the procedures put in place by institutions
and the ability of counter-narratives or understandings to emerge, be
heard and influence mainstream planning.
Based on the literature review in section 2, I chose to focus on the
three dimensions of procedural justice, namely: recognition,
participation/procedure, and epistemic justice. Recognition is the
‘processes of disrespect, insult and degradation that devalue some
people and some place identities in comparison to others’ (Walker,
2009:615) or, in other words the lack of recognition about group
difference in a society where some groups are privileged while others
are oppressed (Schlosberg, 2003). It is possible to say that the culture
of disenfranchisement and institutional abandonment in the NYCHA
development that took part in this study, is a case of mis-recognition.
The interviewee often referred to a lack of motivation, self-esteem and
degradation among largely tenants of color at Washington Houses,
perpetrated by the many bureaucratic layers and lack of oversight that
NYCHA developed since its defunding began in the 2000s. This
mis-recognition has implications for climate change vulnerability in
that many tenants, already burdened by persisting poverty, physical
mobility issues, inconsistent services provision, may be less active in
attending meetings about issues like flooding, perceived as low in their
ladder of priorities; they may refuse to evacuate for fear of loathing
or enter in conflict with authorities towards whom they lost trust; and
losing their affordable home in the process. At the same time, there are
sustained efforts by leaders, who are tenants themselves, to raise
moral, advocate for tenants’ needs and make alliances with organization
such as the DREAM School, in order to plan for better emergency
preparedness. The kind of survey that led to a better, albeit not
comprehensive, understanding of physical mobility is an example of
localized knowledge production that certainly NYCHA authorities would
not be able to orchestrate or disseminate for better decision making on
the ground (that is if they have up to date information on their
tenants’ physical status). These and more complex forms of localized
knowledge production on climate vulnerability should be sustained in
time and maybe used as a platform to build an autonomous understanding
and political power to demand for larger changes in NYCHA’s structure
and accountability, which in turn, could lead to better services
provision, better housing quality and less disenfranchisement.
As noted in the review, recognition is tied to participation and
procedure, whereas more recognition leads to more participation. A
procedural lens allowed to understand that there is a diversity of
instruments for deliberation around climate change as part of larger
issues of concern for the neighborhood. From public hearings and board
meetings organized by the CB, to hands-on days organized by CIVITAS on
coastal protection to opportunities for community-based planning as part
of the momentum brought by the Rezoning Plan. The turnout in smaller
events is perceived as a problem, however, where either constituents do
not use the CB as much as they could, or there are bigger concerns that
people deal with in their daily lives. This is reflected in the most
talked about topics brought by officers in public meetings: homeless,
drugs, education, affordable housing. Not so much climate change. This
is not to say that speakers disagree or do not believe in it, it is to say that in a public meeting where you have 5-10 minutes you talk about
priorities! Indeed, flooding of any kind seems to become the priority
only when a disaster occurs.
The CB could be invested with new powers, beyond only advisory, because
they are in a jurisdictional position that allows for a closer
engagement with citizens, while weighing in on larger processes that
affect the district and city at large. Groups like WeAct already possess
the know-how and skills to produce a good level of evidence-based
research and visual maps to render visible what the city chooses to
exclude from public view. It’s true that FEMA maps and hurricane risk
zones are publicly available, but as WeAct showed, there are more
politically charged ways to show how the rezoning map not only leaves
key facilities in the floodplain but also builds new ones. An aware
citizen is a citizen that has seen a map like that and has reflected on
its implications when the next hurricane strikes.
The study also daylighted a variety of perceptions and ways of knowing
flood exposure, vulnerability and climate resilience. Coastal flooding
exposure was understood in terms of extent of water reach in the
aftermath of Sandy, as a legacy of the natural biophysical properties of
the land, while inland flooding exposure was connected to rainfall and
high-water tables, leading to ‘blue sky flooding’, or as the consequence
of newly built developments which may shift aquifer waters elsewhere and
worsen flooding when it happens.
Climate change resilience was seen under an even larger amount of
viewpoints: 1) an issue of land use and building design; 2) an
opportunity for ecological designs; 3) a need for better emergency
preparedness and emergency funds; 4) an issue of building materials; 5)
an opportunity for tax credits and more comprehensive assessment of
housing retrofitting costs; 6) as ‘the impossibility’ of relocating
lower income households that are most at risk’.
All these views have implications for the politics of resilience in New
York City. On the one hand, they demand that all these disarticulated
perceptions of what climate resilience may look like, to be made visible
as well as its contrast and overlaps with City led agendas. While the
Rezoning Plan contemplated issues of new building designs, it did very
little to address ground floors in existing properties – aside from
mandating that boilers and other mechanical equipment be raised. CDCs
are desiring other solutions around building materials but also more
comprehensive and sustained solutions such as a long-term commitment
with the government, underwriting a deal where low income housing are
given tax credits to be able to do the necessary mitigation measures. A
district-wide assessment of the costs of retrofitting is also needed and
could drive cost-efficiency if the costs are shared across the whole of
Northern Manhattan. The Rezoning also mentions hard infrastructure
measures, such a sea wall, along portions of the East River Esplanade.
Yet elsewhere in the city, in areas like Jamaica Bay and Fishkill in
Staten Island, that are also less urbanized, the State has promoted
ecological work to restore wetlands. Although groups like CIVITAS, are
producing plans and advocating at the State level for the same to happen
on the East River Esplanade, the city seems to be more concerned with
maintaining the promenades due to the time it would take to obtain
permits.
Another reflection on the politics of resilience is connected to
emergency management and how organizations access information about
flooding. Although the sample of organizations was very small and more
should be done to understand this issue further, it is clear that a
dependency on knowledge produced by weather forecasts, online and on tv,
or to check what the Mayor is saying to do, are what organizations rely
on to understand when and where it may flood. The only more informal way
was to use weather apps. May this dependency on centralized knowledge
become detrimental during power shutdowns in the even to catastrophic
flooding? Finally, emergency preparedness seems to be the purview of
COAD and CERT, while other organizations like the CB are not as informed
on where to go and what to do, and yet it their role as represents East
Harlemites in the face of constant change seems crucial.
A procedural justice lens makes knowledge about flood vulnerability rich
and thick by adopting value-heavy concepts (Hulme, 2018) like justice,
fairness, recognition to daylight how and why different people may be
affected by flooding. In its ability to highlight institutional
practices that misrecognize vulnerable citizens, we see a close
connection between seemingly disparate issues such as housing
affordability and tenants neglect and flood emergency preparedness and
recovery. Nevertheless, a thorough study of participation in
deliberation processes about climate change is difficult, because the
topic, when it’s not in the aftermath of an event, is just one among
many, at time more pressing issues in East Harlem’s public hearings.
Epistemic justice in the form of understanding citizens as knowers in
their own right is also complex. Multiple and conflicting knowledges can
be daylighted but this is only part of what epistemic justice means to
my understanding. Here climate knowledge should be produced by and for
citizens, in processes like community research and planning. Further
studies may research the practices, discourses, knowledge produced, used
and shared across alternative forms of climate change counter-planning
currently ongoing in the city. Reasoning together in public to make
actionable knowledge must allow for the expression of contrasting value
commitments, however inconvenient this may be. What are the knowledge
practices that allow asymmetric understandings to emerge? How can they
be nurtured? Once the contrasting value commitments are on the table, is
it enough that they be acknowledged to change the course of action for
climate resilience?