Explorations at the shore
As New Yorkers, no matter where we live, it’s not far from the shore. The city boasts over 600 miles of shoreline across the five boroughs. Yet it seems that, unless you happen to live close to the water, it is somehow involved in part of your commute (I often ride over the Manhattan Bridge with views of the East River and New York Harbor), or you make a concerted effort to go, you easily forget it’s there.
At the genesis of this project I was asking two simple questions. 1) How do our urban living practices impact the water that surrounds us?; and 2) How does the water around us impact urban living? These questions were the distillation of thoughts and concerns raised by PlaNYC 2030, an initiative of the Bloomberg administration that makes predictions about what New York City will look like in the year 2030, recommending and implementing courses of action based upon these predictions.
Water is integral to the infrastructure of New York; it’s management a complex and layered flow of ever changing challenges. Our bodies are composed of 70% water and, as the waters that surround us, contain significant amounts of toxic material, often called the Body Burden. Common sources include plastics, in the form of phthalates in the body and polyethylene terephthalate ethylene (think plastic bottles) in the environment, as well as pesticides.
The Urban Design Lab’s Plastic Trash Patch Project has been instrumental in helping me navigate the myriads of information available and in connecting it to the particular challenges of urban living. Single use plastics is a huge concern and often tied to what we put into our bodies. I’m hard pressed to find food at a supermarket that isn’t packaged in plastic, that includes vegetables. Many neighborhoods don’t have a green market, one of the few places where packaging is less pervasive, though the ubiquitous plastic bag is ever present. Then there is the cost...
In the midst of research, I became completely overwhelmed to a point of paralysis. It seemed the only solution was to move upstate (or to a farm community in France where genetically modified foods are minimal), and begin a subsistence lifestyle. This, however, wouldn’t address the issues at hand, so here are three practices I’ve adopted as a starting point:
1) Carrying an empty bag for shopping
2) Filling my stainless steel water bottle at home, or wherever I am
3) Changing my skin care products (soap, shampoo, lotion) to phthalate free products.
I hope you’ll consider adopting them for yourself.
Lynn
Your Planet: The Human Mapping Project
Tuesday, August 17, 2010