At the Macaulay Community Voices, Jamie Stein from Sustainable South Bronx, and Adam Friedman from the Pratt Center spoke about improvements that can make New York City more sustainable. Jamie Stein introduced her presentation with a short clip titled “Breathe Easy” about the two children living in the South Bronx. In this clip, the children touched upon issues that affected their community, specifically the issue of increased asthma due to pollution from trucking. This clip brought up the issue of environmental injustice where a community like the
South Bronx faces increased burden because of race and class.

After the clip, Jamie Stein provided a short history on how the South Bronx became subject to environmental injustice. She linked the decline of the community to Robert Moses’ highways that caused urban sprawl. Because of the decreasing populations and redlining, the community became an undesirable place to live and without a voice, the community was targeted by industry. Areas like Hunts Point in the South Bronx inevitably started taking in 40% of the city’s sewage because of environmental injustice. Companies such as the NYOFCO set up plants that burned city sludge into fertilizer, which polluted the surrounding atmosphere with nitrogenous wastes and toxic chemicals. Residents who could not afford to leave the area were forced to live in the polluted community and could do little about it.

Jamie Stein expressed how unfair it was that this community had to take in such a large percentage of the city’s sewage. She spoke about the Sustainable South Bronx as an organization whose aim is to prevent such injustices. Started by Majora Carter, the organization has developed many projects to improve the community. Jamie Stein described how the organization succeeded in distributing sewage and waste more uniformly around New York City to relieve the burden in Hunts Point. In addition, she also mentioned other projects the organization has worked on, including the restoration of the Hunts Point waterfront and the establishment of different outreach programs. She mentioned training programs like BEST that reach out to low-income community members who need second chances. Such training programs train participants in sustainable development giving them many new opportunities to help their community.

After Jamie Stein concluded, Adam Friedman introduced his presentation with art from Chris Jordan. The pictures he displayed emphasized how much garbage an average human makes per day. Adam Friedman used these pictures to discuss ways to reduce pollution and excessive waste. He stressed that individuals have control as to how much garbage they produce by changing their behavior. The example he used was on gift-wrapping. By choosing not to wrap gifts, an individual can reduce the amount of waste he or she will produce and this will have cumulative impact on the environment.

In addition to waste reduction, Adam Friedman also discussed ways to improve the community. Mr. Friedman suggested for communities to engage in local renovation projects to increase sustainability by block. He emphasized that neighbors should join together to make changes to their block so that renovations would be cost efficient. Also, such retrofitting would decrease energy costs and increase public health affordability.

In addition to housing renovations, Adam Friedman discussed how social networks allow communities to work together to increase job availability. Mr. Friedman spoke about increasing job support by incubating small businesses within existing usable spaces. By using local church kitchens for example, small startup restaurants can gain the jumpstart they need as a business. Through this description of job development, Adam Friedman also started talking about planNYC. He criticized Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for 2030 in which he claimed that it did not make provisions for employment and land use.

At the end of Adam Friedman’s talk, he mentioned a few challenges to the sustainability movements. One issue he described was that people of higher class have more influence over law, which is a problem in getting things done. In addition, a second problem he described was how subsidy negatively impacts an individual’s decision making. These challenges must be overcome in order to make improved movements toward sustainability.

From this community voices event, an understanding of the challenges of sustainable development was gained. Through Jamie Stein’s talk, we learned about environmental injustice around the city and the efforts being made by the Sustainable South Bronx to alleviate the problems. In addition, from Adam Friedman’s talk, we learned about how important an individual’s behavior and networks are in developing sustainable habits in a community. These discussions were helpful for development of future plans for a sustainable New York City.