Students Learning From Superstorm Sandy a Year Later

A student in the green infrastructure course explains her work to Red Hook community members in AugustFor all its destruction, Superstorm Sandy possessed a silver lining: it provided a “teachable moment.”
Since the storm struck New York City roughly a year ago on October 29, Pratt professors and students have studied a broad range of issues related to disaster preparedness and climate change. They also sought to ease New Yorkers’ suffering immediately following the storm.

The Pratt Disaster Resilience Network (PDRN) was perhaps the first group on campus to focus on Sandy relief. The organization collected and distributed donations and coordinated volunteer opportunities for the Pratt community. An alumni group, called Storm Support, sold shirts and bags specially designed around Sandy-related relief efforts themes, with all proceeds going to charity. Led by 2012 undergraduate communications design alumni Walter Shock, Anshey Bhatia, and Jesse Resnick, this design-centric website raised nearly $10,000, all of which was given to the Robin Hood Foundation, according to Shock.

This past summer, the School of Architecture also launched RAMP—which stands for Recovery, Adaptation, Mitigation, and Planning—an interdisciplinary program of undergraduate and graduate studios that connects budding architects and urban planners with local communities tackling problems posed by climate change. A team of Pratt faculty members led the summer studios, which focused on creating housing, green infrastructure, and community planning solutions for the Sandy-ravaged Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. The effort in Red Hook continues and this fall the team expanded their focus to include Coney Island and in the spring will add the Rockaways, where some Pratt-related activities are already underway.

RAMP participants worked together with city-wide advocacy groups and community groups such as the Center for Social Inclusion (CSI), Red Hook Initiative, Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, Good Jobs New York, The New York Bar Association, and others. Task forces were created to focus on topics such as Innovative Finance, Broadband and New Technologies, Public Housing and Health, providing technical and other support for the studio-based initiatives undertaken by the students. 

“RAMP’s strength and appeal is that it builds in the synergy of this inclusive effort to address adaptation to climate change, while helping to build the social networks and social cohesion necessary to address such a complex undertaking,” says Ron Shiffman, a professor in the Graduate Center for Planning.

The initial success of the program allowed the team to win grant funding. The model of a holistic and transdisciplinary approach to rebuilding and the integration of partnerships with both the professional and advocacy communities led CSI to ask Pratt to join it in a special effort to address the needs of the most vulnerable communities exposed to the threats of climate change. With the support of CSI and groups like the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, Pratt received a grant of $120,000 from the Kresge Foundation to continue to explore this refined pedagogical model for addressing climate change in an equitable manner. To learn more about RAMP's work attend one of three events this fall that are part of the series, Our Climate, Our City, Our Future: Hurricane Sandy One Year Later, co-sponsored by Pratt, CSI, and the Marfa Dialogues.

Those areas are already familiar to at least one Pratt faculty member, James Garrison, adjunct associate professor, Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Department.  Garrison built new modular restroom and lifeguard stations there to replace facilities damaged by Sandy. 

Continuing in that vein, Garrison is developing a prototype for emergency housing to be used in similar disaster scenarios. Construction of a temporary three-story prototype is planned for this fall on Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn. The goal is to use the prototype as part of a pre-planning exercise, with people living in the complex’s three separate apartments to test them out. (The project is supported by the city’s Office of Emergency Management in collaboration with a number of other city, regional, and federal entities.)

The project also dovetails with RAMP. On the prototype’s ground floor, a gallery will feature work by architecture students who participated in one of the program’s studios last summer. 

As the city approaches the first anniversary of Sandy, Pratt is also co-sponsoring several events in the Marfa Dialogues/New York series, which examines climate change science, environmental activism, and artistic practice. What’s clear is that Pratt will not soon forget Sandy and its impact.

“Superstorm Sandy woke up the establishment to issues that we and our allies have been advocating for the past decade,” says Shiffman. “Climate change to my mind is the greatest challenge that we face as a people. While it is a challenge, it’s also an enormous opportunity for the next generation of planners.” 

Watch Shiffman tell Gateway about RAMP. 

Text: Bay Brown; Ruth Samuelson
Images: Peter Tannenbaum