S3 E2: An Estuary Transformed

S3 E2: “What if the rebuilding of the city in the face of a climate crisis is a moment to build a more just and a more environmentally flexible city?”

Before we can understand what the future of New York City could look like as our climate changes, we need to go back... way back. With the help of local historian and professor, Kara Schlichting, Christina learns about what the area was like before European colonization, how settlers changed New York’s waterfronts, and how the development of industrial port infrastructure set the city up for economic dominance -- and put New Yorkers on a collision course with environmental issues we’re contending with to this day. How can our past help us determine what an equitable future might look like?

Resources:

• Manahatta to Manhattan: Native Americans in Lower Manhattan, National Museum of the American Indian
• Robert A. Caro - The Power Broker
• Vision 2020 New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan
• Russell Shorto - The Island at the Center of the World

Featured in this episode:

• Kara Schlichting, Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY, Author of New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore