Sustainable Cities: Brooklyn
“This two-week, intensive Brooklyn summer program provides students with an overview of urban sustainability in New York City with a focus on the vibrant borough of Brooklyn. The program is focused on the practical integration of environmental science, policy, and design. Through hands-on, experiential learning, the program will expose students to the complex economic, ecological, and social systems that urban planners, policy-makers and other experts and decision-makers must consider when planning for a 21st Century, sustainable NYC.
Our Brooklyn summer program first examines some of the urban systems designed for water, waste, and food production. It then shifts focus to the methodological tools students need to propose a viable solution to one particular problem through a “design challenge.” The subject of the design challenge is stormwater management in Brooklyn. The control of street trash that will become floatables in the local waterways of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary is a significant environmental problem, which exceeds the capacity of NYC’s highly engineered “sewershed” and wastewater treatment system. Students learn about the systems in place to combat this problem. Some systems that will be explored in detail include green infrastructure (bioswales, green roofs, biomimicry, etc.), municipal solid waste (recycling, trash, and composting), and urban agriculture. These and other topics, including functional ones such as design processes and computational modeling, will come to light through workshops and a guest speaker series featuring engineers, green architects, city planners, urban agriculturalists, and media personalities.”
How do I get started? Click here.
How do I expand this narrative arc? Bring your summer work home with you and implement a related project in your community. Looking for something else? Consider one of these:
Reduce the environmental impact of your community’s Christmas celebrations by launching a Mulchfest.
Track climate change in your part of the world by planting a Tulip Test Garden.
Participate in a quick citizen science project that revolves around the environment or sustainability like The Big Microplastic Survey
Physically build and deploy satellite-tracked Student Drifters that track ocean currents and validate ocean models.
Apply for a grant from the Captain Planet Foundation for your own ocean related project.
HOT TIP: This is a really interesting summer program for a high school student that is interested in the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship. Admission is selective, and the experience is rigorous. Note, however, that the value from any summer program is only as great as how well it links in to the remainder of a student’s academic and extracurricular experience. You’ll get more bang for your buck if you continue the summer work that you’ve started in your home community.