City on the Edge: City Limits' Reporting on Climate Change, Health & Environment
Could This South Bronx Tenement Become One of NYC’s First Hemp-Retrofitted Apartment Buildings?
Students from the Pratt Institute are teaming up with local community group Mothers on the Move to explore how hemp—a building material rarely used in housing—could help retrofit some of New York’s oldest buildings, improving indoor air quality and lowering heating and cooling emissions.
The partnership is the latest chapter in Mothers on the Move’s nearly 30-year fight against the environmental and housing conditions that have long made the South Bronx a national symbol of urban health disparities. Bronx residents have the highest adult asthma rate in the city—21 percent, compared to 14 percent citywide—driven by proximity to highways, industry, and aging, poorly ventilated buildings.
“We get sick,” said Wanda Salaman, the group’s executive director. “But some of our apartments that we live in are sicker than us.”
Department Of City Planning Shutters Design Division
The move caused a stir at the agency, with planners from past administrations criticizing the decision. They stressed the importance of urban design to make neighborhoods livable as the city plans to build hundreds of thousands of new housing units.
Opinion: How 459 Smith St. Could Set a New Standard for Gowanus Redevelopment
“From a sustainability and environmental justice perspective, the question is not whether redevelopment should occur, but under what conditions and for whose benefit.”
