Hot! In the City
A City Study in collaboration with 9th and 10th grade students from the Academy of Urban Planning and Engineering (AUPE) and Project Lead Ro Garrido from the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)
Learn more about the project on CUP’s website.
In the spring of 2022, Teaching Artist Alex Cabana collaborated with students from AUPE to take a closer look at the urban heat island effect and the issue of extreme heat in NYC. To investigate the issue, students surveyed community members in Bushwick and interviewed stakeholders working in climate research and policy. They processed and communicated their findings through creative art-making activities. Students produced postcards, collaborative “exquisite corpse” city drawings, stakeholder “selfie” portraits, and mixed media garden collages to represent the root causes and consequences of urban heat islands and extreme heat.
The team gathered what they learned and created this booklet to teach others about the urban heat island effect, the impact of extreme heat on New Yorkers, and what changes we need to make to navigate and survive extreme heat in the city.
Continue scrolling to read more about the curriculum; click through some images of student work for additional context.
In this introductory activity, students defined “heat” in their own words and reflected upon their relationship to and experience of extreme heat. Taking graphic cues from vintage postcard designs, students decorated postcard templates of hot destinations with colors and details that evoke the sensations of warmth and heat.
In this adaptation of the surrealist parlor game, students collaborated in table groups to create an “exquisite corpse” city in four rounds. In the first round, students were prompted to envision and draw a slice of the city with the most access to wealth, resources, and political power. Each successive round, they were prompted to draw and envision slices of the city subjected to increasing divestment and vulnerability. To contextualize why extreme heat impacts different neighborhood unequally, each round was prefaced with quotes about discriminatory and exclusionary housing practices like redlining.
What kinds of neighborhoods do you think are being represented here? What visual details do you notice that suggest the structural and historical factors that contribute to the unequal impacts of climate change?
By conducting a community survey of Bushwick residents, students learned that their neighbors are valuable sources of embodied knowledge and insight. At a nearby subway entrance and plaza, students asked community members about their experiences of extreme heat and what changes they’d like to see in their neighborhoods. Students were pleasantly surprised to find that most people they approached were incredibly receptive and open to speaking with them.
Students conducted virtual interviews of Daphne Lundi, Deputy Director for Social Resiliency at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency and Dr. Luis Ortiz, US Dept. of Transportation Data Fellow, Office of Climate Policy. Over Zoom, students asked the interviewees about their backgrounds, work experience, and how students can advocate and organize for change.
To synthesize their findings from the interviews, students created “selfie portraits” with app icons that represent Daphne and Luis’ perspective and experience.
To process all the data and research the class gathered over the course of the project, students produced mixed media collages of gardens above and below the soil line. The collage served as a visual metaphor to connect the structural or “root” causes of urban heat islands with the tangible consequences that we experience in our everyday lives.
What kind of neighborhood do you want to live in? How could we sow, cultivate, and tend to the investments we want to see? Above ground, what would that look like in our community? Below ground, how can we advocate and organize to realize that vision?