ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—On Thursday, November 20, the Bard Center for Environmental Policy (BCEP) and Bard Urban Studies in New Orleans Program (NOI) will host a panel discussion with four distinguished speakers exploring the redevelopment of New Orleans and viable options for urban planning and environmental policy post–Katrina. The event, “Urban Environmental Sustainability—Rebuilding New Orleans,” is free and open to the public and will take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in room 103 of the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation. Directly following the panel discussion at 7 p.m., there will be information sessions for prospective students to find out more about both the BCEP and NOI programs. Light refreshments will be served.

 

With a rapidly changing climate, a growing population, and the collapse of ecosystems across the globe, urban environmental policies and redevelopment plans must meet our development goals without undermining the integrity of the environment or our communities. Cities such as New Orleans offer valuable points of reference for the development of new ideas in urban policy, planning, and sustainability. Bard’s panel will explore such questions as: What does the post-disaster experience in New Orleans contribute to our knowledge of how cities should develop and function? How do the previous three years in New Orleans inform notions of urban development and sustainability pertaining to all cities? How should cities best reconcile the need to protect their citizens from environmental threats with the need to protect residents’ rights to their private property? And more broadly, what are the connections between issues of environmental policy and issues of public and social policy?

 

Mark K. Fischetti is an editor at Scientific American and managing editor of its new magazine, Earth 3.0. His 2001 article, “Drowning New Orleans,” in Scientific American predicted the widespread disaster that a hurricane like Katrina would impose, and described comprehensive projects that would save the Mississippi delta. After Katrina hit he appeared as an expert on CNN, NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert, the History Channel, NPR News, and international media. He published “Protecting New Orleans” in Scientific American’s February 2006 issue, which presented engineering solutions to protect New Orleans and deltas worldwide from future storms. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, and other leading publications. He is coauthor of The New Killer Diseases (Crown, 2003) with Boston University microbiologist Elinor Levy, and of Weaving the Web (HarperCollins, 1999) with Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web. He lives in Lenox, Mass.