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?