This spring, planners from the Regional Plan Association and organizers from Make the Road New York (MRNY) held the first in a series of community workshops geared towards encouraging community members to think about how climate change and extreme weather events affect their daily lives. Ultimately, this partnership aims to build local climate change adaptation capacity in Latinx communities of central Queens.

This is not the first collaboration between RPA and MRNY. Make the Road New York made its mark by molding a number of recommendations in the Fourth Regional Plan.

MRNY will share this valuable insight drawn from their advocacy work and actions with RPA to effectively guide research towards targeted communities. RPA planners will bring their research skills and community engagement experience from the Fourth Regional Plan process to source the most pressing climate risks affecting the Borough of Queens.

The first workshop brought to the light the issues that Queens residents deal with on a daily basis. Asthma, health problems exacerbated by extreme temperatures, and stress all stem from extreme weather events. Ultimately, we hope that high-level tools and best practices will emerge to help communities adapt to climate change effects. This will assist organizers from Make the Road NY to develop a grassroots climate agenda for Latino and working-class neighborhoods into working with policymakers on solutions.

Our next workshop, which will be held at the Make the Road office in Queens on June 19th,will address the potential solutions for the issues brought to light during the first workshop.