Sustainability in the Town Square

There’s lots of talk in preservation about how we can make our historic homes greener and more sustainable. But as we face the realities of climate change, our public spaces should be areas of focus, too. Neighborhood gathering spaces can not only serve as important logistical resources, but they shape how we as members of communities – neighborhoods, New Yorkers, Americans – interact and engage with issues bigger than ourselves. Victoria Herrmann has traveled the globe to tackle these topics, and she’ll discuss why public spaces matter in an era of rapid environmental change, why historic preservation is vital, and how we can build neighborhood resilience by adapting our historic public spaces. We’ll explore concrete ways you can push for new policies, at the local and national level, and how we can all learn to be advocates for useful and sustainable historic public spaces. This event is presented in partnership with The New School and cohosted by the Schools of Public Engagement.

Victoria Herrmann is the President and Managing Director of The Arctic Institute. Her work focus on climate change, community adaptation, human development, and resource economies, with a particular focus on Arctic oil and gas. She is a Gates Scholar at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, where she is pursuing a PhD in Political Geography of the Arctic. In 2016, Victoria is traveling across the United States for a National Geographic funded book on climate change stories, America’s Eroding Edges. She is the author of Arctic Melt: Turning Resource Extraction into Human Development (2015) and has been published in many peer-review journals, including the Polar Law Yearbook, Polar Record, and Polar Geography. Her expert opinion has appeared on CNN, BBC, and NPR among others.