Climate Change in NY: Urban Planning + What the Frack?

Climate Change in NY: Urban Planning + What the Frack?

September 27, 1-3pm @ Queens Museum 
Climate Change in an Urban Panorama (1-2pm)
Juan Camilo Osorio of the NYC-Environmental Justice Alliance guides visitors through a tour of the Queen’s Museum’s famous Panorama of the City of New York. Models can be inspiring as they change the scale of people’s encounter with their environment. By looking at the vast architectural model of New York City from the perspective of climate justice, visitors see directly the challenges and opportunities faced by urban planning for a changing climate. The tour is followed by the projection on the panorama’s back wall of photos and videos from Sandy Storyline, a participatory documentary project initiated by Housing is Human Right and the MIT Center for Civic Media.

What the Frack are You Drinking? (2-3pm)
Wes Gillingham, Program Director of Catskill Mountainkeeper, uses the Watershed Model, a 540 square foot relief map built by the Department of Water Supply, Gas, and Electricity for the 1939 World’s Fair, to illustrate the potential impact of fracking of NYC’s water supply. Following the tour is an emergency short film detailing the public relations strategies and misinformation campaign perpetuated by the gas industry. “The Sky is Pink,” directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox, looks at the gas industry’s flagrant disregard for the health and safety of the communities it ravages and the historic decision New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is poised to make.

BIOS
Juan Camilo Osorio is the NYC-Environmental Justice Alliance’s Director of Research. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute’s Graduate Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development (PSPD), introducing graduate students to qualitative and quantitative urban planning research. Before joining NYC-EJA, he was a Senior Planner and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analyst at The Municipal Art Society Planning Center, where he used spatial information to support research and advocacy on community-based planning, urban design and historic preservation. Before moving to New York, he worked with the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center, a non-profit agency based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, using GIS to study systematic and procedural impediments to fair housing in the central and western regions of that State. He received a master’s degree in regional planning from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a professional degree in architecture from the National University of Colombia, Bogotá.

Wes Gillingham is a co-founder and the Program Director of Catskill Mountainkeeper, an environmental advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the Catskill Region in New York State. Wes serves on the New York Sate Forest Preserve Advisory Committee providing advice and guidance to the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which manages the 3.4 million acres of the State Forest Preserve. He is on the board of Directors for the Sullivan County Farm Bureau and the legislative policy committee for The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY). From 1997 to 2007 Wes with his wife Amy ran a 150 member Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) vegetable operation in Youngsville, NY and during that time he also served on the Board of Directors of NOFA-NY. Prior to farming Wes was an Acting Director of Field Programs for the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute (AEI), a fully accredited, traveling undergraduate and graduate environmental studies program at Lesley University. Wes spent ten years working as a Park Ranger for the National Park Service at the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River where he lead the canoe training for incoming Park Rangers, lead interpretive history and natural history programs, and did canoe patrols along the river. For two years he was a wildlife technician for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s 3 offices in New Paltz, NY.