Last week I saw this post by New York-based urban designer, landscape architect, planner and researcher Yi Zhang. I really valued the way she shared about her own experience of heat stress and then brought it to the collective scale, addressing the inadequacies of street infrastructure and often complete oversight of the provision of basic amenities in public space.
“The absence of basic amenities such as street trees, public seating, and drinking water fountains is a significant oversight in both the existing built environment and urban design and planning guidelines,” she wrote after detailing her own medical event related to experiencing heat stress in public space.
After reading the post, I promptly sent her a connection request and a private message and a few days later we were on a zoom chat, when I asked if I could record. She agreed and this was the conversation that ensued.
Yi, thank you for your time and also sharing your own personal experience of heat stress and how you believe our diverse professions can also do better to advocate for and improve public space particularly in the context of intensifying urban heat and heat waves.
After we stopped recording, we discussed location a bit more and I learned that Yi is in fact relocating to Ithaca later this year, where I spent a couple years myself while attending Cornell University. It was my introduction to small American town life and particularly small university town life in the USA. I loved it. Look forward to hearing about your upstate lifestyle Yi.
2024-07-30