Analyze

I've found myself returning to thinking about/around/within interstitial spaces of care, particularly within hospital settings, interested in how viral activity unsettles the ideas we have around space and boundaries, both biological and infrastructural. In COVID-19 pathology and response, the inbetween, the interstitial, become sites challenge and possibility. With COVID-19, we see an acknowledgment of once forgotten spaces quite obviously, with hospital atria and hallways being reconfigured into patient care spaces, makeshift morgues established in refrigerated trucks, and hospitals spilling out into neighboring streets and parks. More than ever, we see how hospitals are simultaneously bounded and unbounded--the most stable and unstable sites for care. Along this line of thought, what might thinking through hospitals as heterotopia of crisis and deviation afford?

Foucault outlines six principles for heterotopic spaces

The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible

Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time—which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance.

Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications.

I'm currently based in Troy, NY where I recently completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies.  I'll soon be living in NYC to attend medical school. I can be reached at amorgan14[at]gmail[dot]com

I've long been interested in the disaster of routine medical care in the U.S. healthcare system. As far as COVID-19 is concerned, I'm particularly interested in how the long-term health impacts of intensive care are conceptualized and communicated (including Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS)) and the tensions between acute and chronic illness, broadly. 

How is the aftermath of COVID-19 crisis being imagined in different settings? How is this shaping beliefs, practices, and policies?

The author of the article took several quotes from government officials to depict the severity of the situation: mainly taking quotes from governors and even the president to illustrate how the hurricane affected the surrounding communities and mentalities of those living in such towns. In addition, the author added statistics of the support relief and the number of deceased due to the storm. The author also discussed the background of many of the public transportation work shifts, such as airlfight and train systems: they were down becuase of the storm.

The largest risk at hand would be how the nautral disaster, Hurricane Sandy, affected the beaches of New Jersey, causing some the beaches to lose a significant amount of sand; this becomes a risk because the beaches weren't available to use. The beaches of New Jersey make most of the profit in tourism: the shore gaining $35.5 billion for tourism locations. This became a risk becuase there was money lost during and after the storm, as groups tried to repair the shores. In addition, the cost to repair the shores were extremely costly. Another group that received risks and hazards were the communities near the shores: they had to change their entire lifestyle when the beaches were destroyed after the storm. Those communities had to learn how to live without the beaches' resources and had to get accustomed to not going down to the shores while the beaches were being restored.

After the storms, many towns affected came up with ways to increase protection in infrastructure. Town officials working alongside exerpts have been working to upgrade their plans on making their communities more resilient to natural disasters. There have also many several funds and donations for the towns affected by Sandy; there have also been ways on how to help prevent flooding in such areas. In the article, it discusses how "the DEP has worked with local officials to design a proposed $230 million federally-funded system of flood walls along the Hudson River for Hoboken and parts of Weehawken and Jersey City."

"Hurricane Irene marches north, leaving at least 8 people dead and close to 2 million without power in the states it has already hit. Tonight it bore down on millions more from the Delmarva peninsula to the Jersey Shore and the New York metropolitan area."

"More than a million residents and visitors of the Jersey Shore have been evacuated, though a stubborn 600 people, many of them senior citizens, remain in high rise buildings on a barrier island in Atlantic City, according to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Even before the core of the hurricane reached the area Sunday, Christie said winds could reach up to 75 mph at the upper floors of some of the buildings."

"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops deployed to Long Island, New York City, and the Hudson Valley area to help with the storm. Troops will help staff shelters, control evacuation routes, monitor flood threats at the World Trade Center site and work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to secure railways and train tunnels."

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has issued a prepare-to-deploy order for 6,500 active duty troops from all the services to support hurricane relief efforts if necessary."

The main sources of resilience are: discussing the list of pollutants that are spread across through a demographic structure, how pollutants affect and become more apparent to different race and economic levels; the information about possible new pollutants that could appear due to the addition of new companies; and the reconstruction on the zoning laws in Newark. Additionally, there are numerous environmentalists of all types behind this new addition to the zoning and land use regulations. 

The aftermaths of Sandy had created many vulnerabilites to the communities around the shores. There were about 840 million gallons of raw sewage scattered into the Passaic River; and since the sewerage system had struggled to get back to full operating hours and service, there were 4.4 billion gallons of partially treated sewage were released into New York Harbor. In addition, many infrastructure was severely damaged after the storm: houses, power substations, police headquarters, etc.

Although this article talks about how NJPAC will donate money to the victims of the natural disaster, it doesn't include how the money will be used: will it be used to help support the people affected by the storm, help rebuild the building destroyed, etc? In addition, I feel as if this article is missing the key information of how severe the storm struck some places along the coast: by providing such information, it would create more awareness and allow a higher chance for the tickets to be purchased to help support the cause.

"'Environmental Justice and Cumulative Impacts' is intended to create stronger environmental and land use policy tools at the local level to prevent and mitigate additional pollution associated with a variety of development and redevelopment projects. It also addresses environmental justice by helping to prevent Newark, which has a disproportionate number of low-income and residents of color, from having a disproportionate number of polluting projects placed within its borders" (Hislip par. 1).

"showed a graph developed by environmental justice community organizers, which detailed the differences between communities that experience pollution versus the predominant race of those communities, which showed that as the number of people of color or the level of poverty in a neighborhood increased, so too did the cumulative impacts. In New Jersey, the amount of pollution you experience is directly correlated to your income and skin color" (Hislip par. 5).

"She explained that zoning laws in Newark are slowly changing, including rezoning and getting rid of outdated rules that were grandfathered in. But the impacts from the pollutants that were allowed to run rampant are very evident. Before Newark’s zoning laws were updated in 2012, the last time they had been updated was in 1954 and therefore had little regard for quality-of-life issues. The Ironbound district later became a hotbed for environmental justice movements due to its adjacency to industrial areas. Many heavy pollutants that were planned for this area saw heavy protest from EJ activists, like automobile shredding plants and chicken crematoriums" (Hislip par.8).

"The ordinance itself requires individuals applying for commercial or industrial developments within Newark to take the following steps:

1. Reference the city’s ERI and prepare a checklist of pollutants
2. Submit checklist and development application to the city
3. Checklist goes to the Environmental Commission
4. Checklist goes to the Planning or Zoning Board (where appropriate)" (Hislip par. 9)