Join the Ian McHarg Center for a series of discussions about the content of this year’s GND studio crew: the dismantling of the prison, fossil fuel, and industrial agriculture systems in Appalachia, the Midwest, and Mississippi Delta.

See the program and register here.

In their press conference announcing the non-binding resolution (H.R. 109), Rep. Ocasio-Cortez remarked that the public should view their Green New Deal legislation as a “Request for Proposals…we’ve defined the scope and where we want to go. Now, let’s assess where we are, how we get there, and collaborate on real projects.” Since then, a new body of policy development and economic research, headquartered at New Consensus, has emerged. But miuch of the work accomplished to date around the Green New Deal has been focused on abstract, national-scale economic and political strategies. None of it has dealt directly with the unprecedented scale, scope, and pace of community and landscape transformation that it implies.

A national climate plan like the Green New Deal will be understood by most people through the buildings, landscapes, infrastructures, and public works agenda it inspires. Given the scope of these efforts, it’s clear that designers will play a central role in project managing the nation’s response to climate change both at the scale of the national plan and the built works through which most people will experience this transition.

For this fall’s exhibition, the planners and designers in this studio have picked up where last year’s studio left off—with the Midwest, Mississippi Delta, and Appalachia as our regions of focus. Their challenge has been to think and work more concretely, narrowing in on specific sites and communities and developing highly charismatic and compelling stories about the future world a GND might make possible. Accordingly, we narrowed our focus from the all-sector approach used last fall to one that is focused on three specific systems in each region: the carceral system, the fossil fuel system, and the food system. On December 21st, they will present and discuss their work Anjulie Rao, Beka Economopoulos, Bryan Lee, and a panel of experts from the design professions, climate movement, and other related fields.