Join the School of City & Regional Planning, the Student Planning Association, and Diana Hernández, our featured guest, as we celebrate World Town Planning Day in Georgia Tech’s new Living Building, the Kendeda Building.

Friday, November 8, 2019
6:00 p.m. - Doors open
6:30 p.m. - Lecture begins

Since the Kendeda Building is a zero-waste building and a sustainability focused event, we encourage walking, biking (bike racks available on-site), or shuttling from MARTA and across campus (Tech Trolley and Stinger routes stop on Ferst Street nearby). If you must drive, there is limited visitor parking available in Visitors Area 4: State Street & Ferst Drive and Visitors Area 5: North Campus Parking Deck. There is a fee to park in these locations.

Building Equity: Lessons in Sustainability from Community to College Campuses
Buildings represent a middle ground between high-level and small-scale infrastructure. For this reason, they embody specific factors at the intersection of equity and opportunity. For example, recent studies show a correlation between energy efficiency upgrades, usually of interest only to the landlord; and the likelihood of tenant financial burdens and disconnection notices for energy bills. Correlations such as these at the building scale can help reveal otherwise unseen implications of transitions to less environmentally impactful energy technologies. The idea of “just transitions” will be explored in this context, as will comparative approaches from different segments of the US population from college campuses to community settings.

Diana Hernández is an Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She is also the Director of the Community Engagement Core of the NIEHS-funded Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan. Dr. Hernández conducts research at the intersection of energy, equity, housing and health (E2H2). A sociologist by training, her work focuses on the social and environmental determinants of health by examining the impacts of policy and place-based interventions on the health and well-being of socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. A leader in the field, Dr. Hernández has advanced the concept of energy insecurity to reflect challenges associated with meeting basic household energy needs. Her research has explored its social and health implications using qualitative and quantitative methods. Much of her community-oriented research has been conducted with community groups and government agencies and several of her projects have been conducted in her native South Bronx neighborhood, where she also lives and invests in social impact real estate. Dr. Hernández’ cutting-edge work has been published in leading academic journals including the American Journal of Public Health, Energy Policy, Social Science and Medicine, and Health Affairs. Furthermore, her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, Housing and Urban Development and National Science Foundation as well as philanthropic organizations including the JPB Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. Dr. Hernández is currently a member of RWJ’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program and was a JPB Environmental Health Fellow (Cohort 1) at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Hernández was appointed to NYC’s Environmental Justice Board in 2019, received the 2019 Public Health Service Award from the NY League of Puerto Rican Women, was the inaugural recipient of the Dean’s Junior Faculty Excellence in Leadership Award in 2016 and Mailman’s Junior Faculty Teaching Award in 2016. Dr. Hernández completed her doctoral training in Sociology at Cornell University (2010), her undergraduate degree at Hunter College- City University of New York (2002) and is a product of the New York City public school system.

Please note: This will be recorded and/or photographed.
Please be aware that, by attending this event, you consent to your voice and/or likeness being recorded and/or photographed and used by Georgia Tech without compensation, in any media format, now or hereafter known, and you release Georgia Tech from any liability resulting from such usage. If you do not wish to be subject to the foregoing, do not attend this event.