As Deputy Director, I led a team that developed policy initiatives for extreme heat mitigation, transportation resiliency and sustainability, waste management, green infrastructure, and air quality. I also led an interagency team focused on creating maximum indoor temperature regulations, one of the first extreme heat mitigation policies of its kind in the Northeast. These policy areas were key features of PlaNYC: Getting Sustainability Done, New York City’s Climate Action Plan, and Cool Neighborhoods NYC, the city’s first heat resiliency plan. I also helped New York City secure one of the country’s first heat-related FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grants.
Resilient Neighborhoods was a place-based resiliency planning process led by the NYC Department of City Planning to develop land use policies for communities that were impacted by Hurricane Sandy. As a resiliency planner, I worked with community groups in Canarsie, Sheepshead Bay, and Gerritsen Beach. The multi-year process culminated in the development of neighborhood plans and zoning actions.
In partnership with the Urban Design Forum, I served as the city partner and project manager on Turning the Heat, a yearlong fellowship that explored how urbanists can address the impacts of extreme heat on vulnerable communities in New York City. The fellowship culminated in the development of a manual of 30 design, policy, finance, and community resiliency strategies for heat mitigation.
As a neighborhood planner for the NYC Department of City Planning, I was a project manager on a range of residential, commercial, and open space projects undergoing Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) as well as other land use certifications. Learn more about some of these projects here, here, and here.
Petit Goâve is 68 kilometers southwest of Port-au-Prince and was one of the hardest hit areas by the January 12th, 2010 earthquake. Much of the region is mountainous and experiences severe riverine flooding. I served as a pro-bono environmental planner for a project in ︎︎︎Petit Goâve, Haiti for four years. The project was spearheaded by Community2Community (C2C), a Haitian-led non-profit service organization founded after the earthquake, and a local farming organization in Petit Goâve. The project was focused on the 12th Section of Petit Goâve, Piton Vallue. To develop the scope of the rehabilitation project, first we needed to understand the boundaries of Piton Vallue.
Piton Vallue, like many areas of Haiti, did not have robust mapping data on the neighborhood level. Locals knew community boundaries through the lived experience of walking through Piton Vallue. The Pinchina Consulting group in partnership with the local farming organization developed a community mapping initiative where community members were given GPS devices and walked the boundaries of their neighborhoods as they understood them. The process along with a series of community conversations revealed that Piton Vallue was one of many communities in the 12th Section of Petit Goâve. Learn more about Pinchina’s work here.