Students for Environmental Action (SEA) and Sustainable Hopkins Infrastructure Program (SHIP) hosted Katie O’Meara, environmental design professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and Brenna Goggin, environmental advocate at the Delaware Nature Society, for their first Sustainable Action Speaker Series panel on Nov. 13.
O’Meara emphasized that the creation of green spaces, such as parks, would improve the streets of Baltimore. Her presentation, titled “Baltimore Greening Strategies,” suggested several strategies that would increase the sense of community and improve environmental conditions.
After giving a brief description of the causes of urban blight, which occurs when a city has many old and deteriorating buildings, O’Meara explained her proposal of redesigning segregated boundaries.
“The city border is contained and is without natural boundaries or features,” she said. “One way can be through organizing a shared resource.”
O’Meara also suggested that the boundaries of the city be changed by linking its landmarks together. This would involve evaluating whether landmarks, a category that includes parking lots, are assets or liabilities for a city. Then, she suggested that each school create a green space in a vacant lot nearby. If many schools create green lots, they can be linked together in what O’Meara referred to as the “banding effect.”
“The sense of connectivity is really important in addressing blight,” O’Meara said.
She said that one of her inspirations was a book titled Not in My Neighborhood, written by journalist Antero Pietila, which discusses racial segregation in housing, redlines and the distinct partitions of Baltimore’s areas. Redlining occurs when banks refuse to make loans to people who are living in parts of cities that have poor socioeconomic conditions.
“Historically, the practices of polarizing wealth and poverty were intentional,” she said.
Despite historical cases of discrimination within cities, O’Meary was optimistic for the future. Several projects that would make Baltimore more sustainable are currently in progress. One project, called B’More Cool, aims to employ a number of strategies that would reduce heat within the city.
Goggin, a Delaware native, discussed how her position as an advocate has played a role in combatting sea level rise. As a result of global warming, oceanic levels have been rising, which poses a significant threat to areas that are near sea level.
“The area around us is flatter than a pancake,” she said.
Goggin aims to educate politicians about the threat of sea level rise in order to save Delaware from drowning underwater. She asserted that whether or not politicians believe in climate change and rising sea levels, science has proven that Delaware is becoming submerged. As a result, Delaware has become more vulnerable to superstorms like Hurricane Sandy, the deadliest storm of the 2012 Atlantic storm season.
“It’s a wake-up call for everyone in Delaware,” Goggin said. “The peninsula that Maryland and Delaware is currently sharing is sinking.”
Standing on the stage, Goggin surveyed the audience to see how many people had voted in the most recent election. Only a handful of hands were raised.
“The reason that most people don’t vote is that they don’t think their vote is valid,” she said. “Delaware [has] 800,000 people... Only 34 percent of people showed up to [vote].”
If more people voted, this could lead to shift in the politicians’ environmental priorities.
Goggin also proposed several factors that would improve the current infrastructure, including the installation and preservation of wetlands to capture water. Wetlands, such as marshes and swamps, can be artificially constructed.
Nikita Singh, president of SEA and co-leader of SHIP, felt that the event was insightful. She appreciated the sense of camaraderie between the audience and the speakers.
“The theme for this event was to show the different ways that you can promote sustainability,” Singh said. “I’ve been to a lot of the speaker series, and I really liked the ‘real-world perspective’ that they can give you, and I thought it would be cool if I could bring people from the area, like Baltimore or Delaware, if I could give students who were interested in sustainability an idea [of] where they can go from here.”
Having joined SEA during her freshman year, Singh said she wanted to bring a perspective that differed from the environmental “activism” that the club commonly portrays.
“In my experience, [people] picture activism, but they don’t see how technology can play in it... I thought it was really cool to be able to show those different perspectives, and that’s the idea behind SEA and SHIP and all the environmental groups on campus. I was really excited that the event played [out] really well.”
Her favorite aspect of the presentation was the level of intricacy of the politics that Goggin described.
“I thought it was fascinating to hear how Brenna Goggin dealt with the political figures; [it was] was pretty cool,” Singh said.
SHIP is currently working on a number of projects, such as the incorporation of more hand-dryers, that will make Homewood more environmentally-friendly. This past August, SHIP helped prompt the installation of tinted window films, which prevent a large amount of heat from entering buildings, in the Ralph S. O’Conner Recreation Center and the Glass Pavilion.
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