Democratic Landscape Transformation 2023 - Team 6

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Background of your team

  • Please write a few words about your team.
  • Which linguistic and cultural perspectives are you representing? Which disciplinary backgrounds?


Caroline de Vries - Current IMLA Student, background in Sustainability Management, Environmental Studies, Comparative Literature. From NYC.

Your Landscape Democracy Manifestoes

Here you can add links to the manifestoes you have presented on April 26

Examples of Landscape Activism

In the session on May 10 you will discuss examples of landscape activism from your own contexts. You can share the examples in this section (link, image and/or short explanation)

1) Environmental Justice Activism in NYC - North River Sewage Treatment Plant in West Harlem -Caroline de Vries

WE ACT for Environmental Justice Website WE ACT is a well-established, pioneering environmental justice group founded in West Harlem, NYC in 1988 around the North River Sewage Treatment Plant. Since then, they have been fully engaged as a national leader in environmental justice grassroots activism. In an interview I conducted with Peggy Shepard, one of the co-founders of WE ACT, she reported, "low-income communities and communities of color are being targeted for polluting facilities, so we realized we needed to institutionalize advocacy in our community."

The North River Wastewater Treatment Plant was being built on the Hudson River near 135th street, but it soon became clear that the plant was pollutants that were making people sick. Foul odors where reported everywhere between 123rd Street and 157th Street, yet was considered “negligible” by local NYC officials in an official government report.

Shepard describes the process of pulling-up-sleeves to make this happen:

“It meant holding monthly accountability meetings with the city, training community residents about the science of air quality and environmental exposures, helping them understand. And getting Mayor Dinkins to fund a study of the operations of the plant so we really understood what was going on, and what the plant needed to operate at its best.”

A report by noted environmentalist, Dr. Barry Commoner, was commissioned by NYC Mayor David Dinkins to study emissions from the plant. Commoner found that hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide were being released at levels over New York State air quality levels.

Hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide smell strongly of rotten eggs, and when inhaled, deprive the brain of oxygen.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1988, Shepard, Charles Sutton, and David Paterson, who would later be the future governor of New York, blocked traffic on the Hudson Parkway to bring awareness to the unaddressed pollution. They were surrounded by protesters wearing gas masks. These three and four others were arrested and became known as the “Sewage Seven.”

Orchestrating this groundwork allowed WE ACT to file a lawsuit, WE ACT vs. NYC DEP, that resulted in a $55 million odor abatement plan to fix the sewage plant, and a $1.1 million environmental benefit fund for the West Harlem community.

Shepard stated that fixing the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, “opened our eyes to other polluting entities in the district.”

Since then, WE ACT has grown to one of the largest environmental justice groups in the United States.

Presentation Link

The Role Play

In the session on May 17 you will present a small role play with your team. Please add here a short reflection on what you have learned from this play. The short list of landscape democracy 'movers and shakers' can be found here 


>>> All information on the phase B activities is compiled in this PDF

Readings, concepts and definitions

  • Start: April 5, 2023
  • Due: July 5, 2023

Working in your group, express your personal understanding of the relation of landscape and democracy in the form of a concept map with linking words or any other diagrammatic representation. Please make your maps very visual and not just verbal. Think critically about why one map differs from another

About concept mapping

Before starting the exercise you can read this article by Joseph D. Novak & Alberto J. Cañas about Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them. This paper gives a good explanation of how concept maps are conceived and developed.

You can use any tool you like for producing your concept map. However, since the result needs to be submitted digitally we recommend the following open source software for producing your maps:

Please add your concept map(s) here

  • Possible format: JPG (for wiki upload) or link to any other resource
  • You may add one map per team member or an integrated one
  • add as many additional materials as you need
  • Addyourfilename.jpg

    one caption per author

  • Addyourfilename.jpg

    one caption per author

  • Addyourfilename.jpg

    one caption per author

  • Addyourfilename.jpg

    one caption per author

Please finish with a short reflection

  • What are the similarities and differences in your team regarding your understanding of what democratic landscape transformation is?
  • In how far did the seminar lectures and readings help you to clarify this?
  • What will you take home from this seminar?
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