In a very exciting announcement late last week, the Hudson Valley learned that Poughkeepsie will be serving as the host community for Cornell University's fall 2021 Climate-adaptive Design studio (CaD) for a semester-long (September through December) course in the Department of Landscape Architecture.

Professor Joshua F. Cerra in the Department of Landscape Architecture is responsible for creating the course with the state Department of Environmental Conservation Hudson River Estuary Program.  The goal will be to explore design alternatives for more climate resilient and connected waterfront areas, and the course will use the Hudson riverfront communities for the study.

The City of Poughkeepsie was actually selected to be a host site for the studio as a result of an application process that was open to all Hudson River Estuary waterfront communities.  Poughkeepsie was one of 11 communities that submitted an application.  This is not the first time the CaD studio has worked in the Hudson Valley, since 2015 the cities of Kingston and Hudson, the villages of Catskill and Piermont, and the town and village of Ossining have been utilized.

With regard to the opportunity, Natalie Quinn, City Planning Director said that 'this is a great opportunity for the city to further develop some of the climate-resiliency concepts that were included within the pending LWRP update and address real problems of flooding and risk on our waterfront. The designs that come out of this studio will get us
one step closer to implementation-ready projects that a number of State agencies are eager to fund. We are honored that the City of Poughkeepsie was selected through this competitive process.'

One of the benefits of the CaD studio is that it will assist Poughkeepsie in developing a vision for flooding and climate-related risks after evaluation of the waterfront.  The studio will examine options for highly vulnerable areas that are often impacted by sea-level rise, and will even include meetings with community members to develop a plan around the needs and interests of the community.  A final end of the semester design presentation will be scheduled for the Poughkeepsie community at an on-site open house.

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