Northern Research Station
11 Campus Blvd., Suite 200
Newtown Square, PA 19073
(610) 557-4017
(610) 557-4132 TTY/TDD
Title: Project Coordinator, Science of the Living City
Unit: New York City Urban Field Station
Address: New York City Urban Field Station
431 Walter Reed Road
Fort Totten Cluster #2, Box #12
Bayside, Queens, NY 11359
As project coordinator of the Science of The Living City program, I work directly with researchers and administrative staff at the NYC urban field station to support the design and produce of public programs including seminars, workshops, panels discussions, lectures, film screenings and more, to engage the general program, sharing research generated by experts at field station as well as other institutional partners; in publicly accessible formats, to increase science literacy and to increase partnership and collaboration opportunities among diverse academic, science, design and policy professionals and practitioners.
As project coordinator of the Landscapes of Resilience project, my interest was to gain a deeper understanding of how social bonds are formed among people within a community of collective practice. The collective practice in the context of this project is the design, stewardship, and management of a community garden located at the Beach 41st Houses on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, NY. The space was previously devastated by hurricane Sandy, yet in its aftermath community members persist in caring for the space. Working collaboratively among team members including social science researchers Lindsay Campbell and Erika Svendsen from the USDA Forest Service, members of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), residents of the Beach 41st Houses and TILL; a landscape architecture firm, I coordinated the efforts of a growing network of team members and conducted observational research and interviews to address core research questions including:
The Landscapes of Resilience project is generously supported by the TKF Foundation’s NatureSacred program.
My graduate thesis research analyzed the transformation of the Rockaway peninsula, with a focus on the vast amounts of loss experienced by former and newly arriving residents, and offered a creative solution to the consequent realities wrought by unimaginative and shortsighted urban renewal practices. While the analysis of this dense history sought to explain the shifts that occurred on the peninsula, this research also designed and implemented a Participatory Action Research (PAR) workshop, which engaged members of the youth population of the Rockaway community in a collaborative exploration of the local neighborhood histories. The premise of this workshop was that history can and should be a reflective tool, which supports the healing of past social fractures, brought on by previously ill-informed urban practices. In this way the history of a neighborhood and the processes that form it become a guide to achieving an equitable and inclusive future.
The participatory action research workshop occurred over a six- week time frame, within which co-researchers considered their own identity and spatial awareness or their neighborhood. The phases of the workshop were as follows:
Last Modified: 11/01/2017