Syracuse Architecture NYC

Just Urban Ecologies Studio

The studio explored issues at the intersection of community and social resilience, climate and environmental justice in Edgemere, Queens, a vital coastal community in NYC which has suffered the intersecting impacts of environmental hazards, economic disinvestment, and racial discrimination. This has been made most notable through the devastation wrought by the recent shocks and stresses of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as well as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The studio addressed multiple crises simultaneously - climate change and rapidly increasing severe storm and flood risk, historic and persistent racial and environmental injustice, acute lack of affordable housing and housing choice, deficient neighborhood amenities including retail and public parks, insufficient connectivity within and beyond the community, and extreme ecological degradation.  Throughout the semester, student groups developed their own design/spatial justice manifestos, neighborhood design narratives and urban design responses as a final deliverable.