According to New Yorkers, two different Hurricane Sandys hit their city in 2012. The first was a one-time indiscriminate exceptional catastrophe. The second was an extraordinary acceleration of inequalities affecting the poorest New Yorkers. Daniel A. Cohen and Max Liboiron promote the second perspective as a systemic approach susceptible of helping New York City face the challenges of environmental distress both locally and globally

Cohen, Daniel Aldana

Liboiron, Max

English

Kosmopolis

University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons
Departmental Papers (Sociology) Penn Sociology
10-2014
New York's Two Sandys
Daniel Aldana Cohen
University of Pennsylvania, dacoh@sas.upenn.edu
Max Liboiron
Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers
Part of the Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Emergency and Disaster
Management Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons,
and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons
At the time of publication, author Daniel Aldana Cohen was affiliated with New York University. Currently he is a faculty member in the Sociology
Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers/34
For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.
Recommended Citation
Cohen, Daniel, and Max Liboiron. 2014. "New York's Two Sandys." Metropolitics (Métropolitiques)
New York's Two Sandys
Abstract
According to New Yorkers, two different Hurricane Sandys hit their city in 2012. The first was a one-time
indiscriminate exceptional catastrophe. The second was an extraordinary acceleration of inequalities affecting
the poorest New Yorkers. Daniel A. Cohen and Max Liboiron promote the second perspective as a systemic
approach susceptible of helping New York City face the challenges of environmental distress both locally and
globally.
Disciplines
Demography, Population, and Ecology | Emergency and Disaster Management | Environmental Policy |
Inequality and Stratification | Sociology | Urban Studies and Planning
Comments
At the time of publication, author Daniel Aldana Cohen was affiliated with New York University. Currently he
is a faculty member in the Sociology Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers/34
New York’s Two Sandys
Daniel Aldana Cohen, Max Liboiron1
According  to New Yorkers, two different Hurricane Sandys hit their city in 2012. The first was a  
one-time indiscriminate exceptional catastrophe. The second was an extraordinary acceleration of  
inequalities affecting the poorest New Yorkers. Daniel A. Cohen and Max Liboiron promote the  
second perspective as a systemic approach susceptible of helping New York City face the challenges  
of environmental distress both locally and globally.
On October 29,  2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded New York City’s  streets,  subterranean transit 
system,  and 90,000 homes  and businesses.  Forty-three  people  died,  6,500 were  evacuated  from 
nursing homes, and nearly 2 million lost power. Gasoline shortages paralyzed vehicle traffic (City 
of New York 2013). New Yorkers were not affected equally, and these inequalities have deepened 
during the ongoing recovery and reconstruction.
The Two Sandys framework: a disruptive event vs. an exacerbation of systemic inequalities
Through our work with the Superstorm Research Lab, we have found that responses to the storm 
can be sorted into two groups, which we term a Two Sandys framework (Superstorm Research Lab 
2013). This framework identifies two distinct ways of understanding the storm that translate into 
particular sets of concerns, priorities, and actions.2
The first way of understanding Sandy is as an acute, disruptive event. This perspective is most 
common among governing and elite institutions such as large NGOs and foundations, the entities 
that  exercise  the  major  share  of  authority  and  influence  at  the  municipal  and  state  levels.  It 
understands Sandy as a severe, but relatively short-term, interruption of normal city functions and 
focuses largely on physical infrastructure. The recovery goals inherent in this frame have been to 
repair interruptions to the pre-storm status quo of New York City as a stable, global cultural and 
economic center as quickly as possible, with a significant focus on strengthening infrastructure.
The  second  way of  understanding  the  storm,  most  common  among  community  groups  and 
grassroots political networks, is that Sandy  sharpened and exacerbated systemic problems.  This 
perspective  sees  Sandy’s  impact  as  intensifying  an  ongoing  crisis  stemming  from  social  and 
economic inequality. The recovery goals inherent in this frame are focused on pairing shorter-term 
triage with longer-term transformations of the underlying sources of vulnerability and economic 
insecurity, namely inadequate housing, precarious employment, and inaccessible essential services.
1 Names are listed in alphabetical order. The co-authors made equal intellectual contributions and wrote the article  
together,  based  on  research  produced  collectively  by  the  Superstorm  Research  Lab. 
(www.superstormresearchlab.org), of which they are co-founding members.
2 Our findings are based on collaborative efforts of the Superstorm Research Lab to conduct nearly 80 interviews with 
actors in local and state governments, a range of civil society groups, volunteer first responders, and ordinary New 
Yorkers hit hardest by the storm. We also draw on ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and collaborative 
research with scholars and community organizations.
1
Two concepts of crisis, two modes of response
The different concepts of crisis we term the Two Sandys have led to different types of responses. 
New York City’s mayoral  After Action Report (2011), for instance, identifies problems beginning 
days  before  the  storm that  could  be  addressed by technical  fixes  in  the  near  future,  including 
evacuation orders, gasoline shortages, and power outages (Gibbs and Holloway 2013). City and 
state governments have devoted substantial planning efforts to long-term reconstruction after Sandy, 
the bulk of which initially focused on returning to and safeguarding—rather than changing—the 
social and economic status quo. Both of these examples are characteristic of the first perspective on 
Sandy.
Meanwhile, grassroots and community-based organizations (CBOs) have focused more on how 
the storm has exacerbated vulnerability via a deepening of income insecurity, insufficient access to 
education, unaffordable housing, and widespread debt. For many communities, “back to normal” 
does not mean recovery, but a return to vulnerability. Thus, organizations like Alliance for a Just 
Rebuilding—a coalition  of  faith  groups,  labor  unions,  community  groups,  and  environmental 
organizations—explicitly point to the need for good jobs, affordable housing, renewable energy, 
accessible  health  care,  and  community  consultation  for  recovery  plans  (Alliance  for  a  Just 
Rebuilding 2013).
Inequality and crisis exacerbated—the case of housing
Housing provides perhaps the most telling example of Sandy’s effect on existing inequalities, as 
well as the ways in which the city’s response has ended up prolonging chronic crisis. The storm 
destroyed  or  damaged  305,000 housing  units  in  New York  City.  Poor  and  working  class 
New Yorkers, especially tenants, immigrants, and people of color, have struggled disproportionately 
to  repair  their  homes,  echoing  trends  documented  in  the  aftermath  of  Hurricane  Katrina  in 
New Orleans (Merdjanoff 2013). A report from Alliance for a Just Rebuilding found that lower-
income homeowners are getting virtually no government funding, despite over $3 billion in federal 
aid to the city for disaster recovery (Alliance for a Just Rebuilding 2014). Municipal documents 
reveal  that  only 110 of  19,920 registrants  for  the  Build it  Back  program, or  0.55%, have been 
awarded a grant so far, and in January 2014—more than two years after the storm—construction 
had not begun on a single house.3 Since then, however, mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has 
slowly managed to accelerate the rebuilding process (Buettner and Chen 2014).
In the case of public housing, more than 80,000 New Yorkers living in over 400 New York City 
Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings lost key services like electricity and elevators when the 
storm struck. According to a survey of nearly 500 NYCHA residents, 55% had repair needs in their 
dwellings before Sandy, 40% developed new needs because of Sandy, and 62% were told they 
would have to wait six months or more for repairs. The table below shows, for example, how Sandy 
worsened widespread preexisting mold contamination (Alliance for a Just Rebuilding et al. 2014).
3 Ibid. and the City of New York’s Sandy Funding Tracker website (URL: www1.nyc.gov/sandytracker).
2
Source: Alliance for a Just Rebuilding et al. 2014.
The Two Sandys framework illustrates the distinct ways that New Yorkers understood Hurricane 
Sandy—understandings that form the basis for subsequent actions. But the Two Sandys framework 
also  points  to  a  more  systemic  approach,  which  understands  environmental  disasters  as  both 
sharpening (in the short term) and exacerbating (over a longer stretch) preexisting inequalities not 
only locally but also on a more global scale.
Addressing systemic inequalities: long-term, local, and global
Locally,  in  New York  City,  community  groups  that  have  poured  research  and  organizing 
resources into housing advocacy played an instrumental role in electing New York’s new mayor, 
Bill  de Blasio.  The  new  city  government  has  shown  much  more  interest  than  the  previous 
administration in the intersection between Sandy recovery,  long-term disaster preparedness,  and 
equal access to housing (Beck 2014). Elections matter. Even so, it remains too soon to say whether 
the  de Blasio administration will  succeed in implementing the real,  lasting improvements to the 
economic and social security of lower-income New Yorkers that the administration says are now a 
priority.
More globally, while we focus on the Two Sandys in New York City, there was also yet another 
Hurricane Sandy, which hit Haiti and other coastal countries before making landfall in the United 
States. Haiti’s Sandy killed 52 people, flooded most of the south end of the country, and displaced 
tens of thousands of families, adding to the 400,000 people that were already displaced and living in 
camps after the 2010 earthquake and the 7,500 Haitians killed by the 2010–2013 cholera epidemic 
(Rosen 2012). In large part thanks to climate change, for Haiti, New York, and most of the world, 
regular disasters are the new normal.
3
A just response to extreme weather, at the global scale and in the long run, means that New York 
must do more  to pioneer a socially equitable form of low-carbon urbanism. It is imperative that 
long-term social and economic justice work be clearly connected to efforts to reduce greenhouse-
gas emissions—which are on track to cause many more Sandys, especially devastating to places 
like Haiti (and the Philippines, and Somalia, etc.). Directly and indirectly, wealthy New York firms 
and  individuals  bear  disproportionate  responsibility  for  climate  change,  but  remain  relatively 
insulated from its effects (Cohen 2014).4 This call dovetails with wider efforts in disaster research 
and  politics  to  push  for  expanding  definitions  of  disaster  to  include  long-term,  chronic,  slow-
moving crises with a focus on populations that shoulder the brunt of everyday pollution, the effects 
of climate change, and environmental illness, among other systemic traumas.
Disasters don’t just leave infrastructure in rubble. They also illuminate the moments when our 
usual forms of intervention fail to address a devastating problem. New systems, communities, and 
policies must emerge as the old systems are overwhelmed by social and physical change. Within 
this paradigm, the systemic inequities that Sandy laid bare occurred long before the hurricane hit. 
The goal of our Two Sandys framework is to direct the focus of policymakers and other decision-
makers to the systemic social crises that extreme weather sharpens and exacerbates.
Bibliography
Alliance for a Just Rebuilding. 2013. Turning the Tide: How Our Next Mayor Should Tackle Sandy  
Rebuilding,  July.  Accessed  29 October 2014,  URL: www.rebuildajustny.org/turning-the-tide-
how-our-next-mayor-should-tackle-sandy-rebuilding.
Alliance for a Just Rebuilding. 2014. How Sandy Rebuilding Can Reduce Inequity in New York City
—A  Plan  of  Action  for  Mayor  de Blasio  from  Sandy  Survivors,  February.  Accessed 
29 October 2014, URL: www.rebuildajustny.org/how-sandy-rebuilding-can-reduce-inequality.
Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, Alliance in Greater New York (ALIGN), Community Development 
Project  at  the Urban Justice Center,  Community Voices Heard,  Faith  in New York, Families 
United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), New 
York Communities for Change (NYCC), and Red Hook Initiative (RHI). 2014. Weathering the  
Storm:  Rebuilding  a  More  Resilient  New  York  City  Housing  Authority  Post-Sandy,  March. 
Accessed  29 October 2014,  URL: www.rebuildajustny.org/weathering-the-storm-rebuilding-a-
more-resilient-nycha-post-sandy.
Beck, Graham T. 2014. “De Blasio’s New Housing Plan Is All About Storm Protection”, Next City, 
18 June.  Accessed  23 June 2014,  URL: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/de-blasios-new-housing-
plan-is-all-about-storm-protection.
Buettner, Russ and Chen, David W. 2014. “Hurricane Sandy Recovery Program in New York City 
Was  Mired  by  Its  Design”,  New York  Times,  4 September.  Available 
online: www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/nyregion/after-hurricane-sandy-a-rebuilding-program-is-
hindered-by-its-own-construction.html.
City of New York. 2013. PlaNYC: A Stronger, More Resilient New York, 11 June, pp. 11 and 133.
Cohen,  Daniel  Aldana.  2014.  “Fortress  of  Solitude:  New  York’s  Climate  Parochialism  after 
Superstorm  Sandy”,  6th annual  Krueckeberg  Doctoral  Conference  in  Urban  Studies,  Urban  
Planning and Public Policy, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers 
University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 10 March.
4 For an example study of the indirect climate impacts stemming from urban consumption, see Heinonen, 
Jukka, Kyrö, Riika and Junnila, Seppo. 2011. “Dense Downtown Living More Carbon Intense Due to 
Higher Consumption: A Case Study of Helsinki”, Environmental Research Letters, vol. 6, no. 3, 1 July.
4
Gibbs,  Linda I.,  and  Holloway,  Caswell F.  2013.  Hurricane  Sandy  After  Action.  Report  and  
Recommendations to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City: City of New York, May. 
Available online: www.nyc.gov/html/recovery/downloads/pdf/sandy_aar_5.2.13.pdf.
Merdjanoff, Alexis. 2013. “Tenants: An overlooked vulnerable population in disaster research and 
recovery”,  Superstorm  Research  Lab,  23 October.  Accessed  29 October 2014, 
URL: http://superstormresearchlab.org/2013/10/23/tenants-an-overlooked-vulnerable-
population-in-disaster-research-and-recovery.
Rosen, Armin. 2012. “The Other Hurricane Sandy:  The Storm’s Impact  in  Haiti”,  The Atlantic, 
31 October.  Available  online: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/the-
other-hurricane-sandy-the-storms-impact-in-haiti/264362.
Superstorm Research Lab. 2013.  A Tale of Two  Sandys, white paper.  Accessed 29 October 2014, 
URL: http://superstormresearchlab.org/white-paper.
Max Liboiron is an assistant professor of sociology and technology at the Memorial University of 
Newfoundland and a co-founding member of the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual aid research 
collective. Liboiron studies “techniques of definition,” the tools and practices used by scientists and 
activists to make emerging, contested, amorphous forms of harm legible enough for action.
Her website: www.maxliboiron.com.
Daniel Aldana Cohen is a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University and a co-founding 
member of the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual aid research collective. Interested in deepening 
debates  about  climate justice,  he studies urban climate politics and urban social  movements  in 
global  cities,  especially  New York  and  São Paulo.  He  chirps  at  @aldatweets  and  nests  at 
www.aldanacohen.com.
To quote this article:
Daniel Aldana Cohen & Max Liboiron, “New York’s Two Sandys”, Metropolitics, 30 October 2014. 
URL: www.metropolitiques.eu/New-York-s-Two-Sandys.html.
5


New York\u27s Two Sandys

ScholarlyCommons@Penn

University of PennsylvaniaScholarlyCommonsDepartmental Papers (Sociology) Penn Sociology10-2014New York's Two SandysDaniel Aldana CohenUniversity of Pennsylvania, dacoh@sas.upenn.eduMax LiboironFollow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papersPart of the Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Emergency and DisasterManagement Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons,and the Urban Studies and Planning CommonsAt the time of publication, author Daniel Aldana Cohen was affiliated with New York University. Currently he is a faculty member in the SociologyDepartment at the University of Pennsylvania.This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers/34For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.Recommended CitationCohen, Daniel, and Max Liboiron. 2014. "New York's Two Sandys." Metropolitics (Métropolitiques)New York's Two SandysAbstractAccording to New Yorkers, two different Hurricane Sandys hit their city in 2012. The first was a one-timeindiscriminate exceptional catastrophe. The second was an extraordinary acceleration of inequalities affectingthe poorest New Yorkers. Daniel A. Cohen and Max Liboiron promote the second perspective as a systemicapproach susceptible of helping New York City face the challenges of environmental distress both locally andglobally.DisciplinesDemography, Population, and Ecology | Emergency and Disaster Management | Environmental Policy |Inequality and Stratification | Sociology | Urban Studies and PlanningCommentsAt the time of publication, author Daniel Aldana Cohen was affiliated with New York University. Currently heis a faculty member in the Sociology Department at the University of Pennsylvania.This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers/34New York’s Two SandysDaniel Aldana Cohen, Max Liboiron1According  to New Yorkers, two different Hurricane Sandys hit their city in 2012. The first was a  one-time indiscriminate exceptional catastrophe. The second was an extraordinary acceleration of  inequalities affecting the poorest New Yorkers. Daniel A. Cohen and Max Liboiron promote the  second perspective as a systemic approach susceptible of helping New York City face the challenges  of environmental distress both locally and globally.On October 29,  2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded New York City’s  streets,  subterranean transit system,  and 90,000 homes  and businesses.  Forty-three  people  died,  6,500 were  evacuated  from nursing homes, and nearly 2 million lost power. Gasoline shortages paralyzed vehicle traffic (City of New York 2013). New Yorkers were not affected equally, and these inequalities have deepened during the ongoing recovery and reconstruction.The Two Sandys framework: a disruptive event vs. an exacerbation of systemic inequalitiesThrough our work with the Superstorm Research Lab, we have found that responses to the storm can be sorted into two groups, which we term a Two Sandys framework (Superstorm Research Lab 2013). This framework identifies two distinct ways of understanding the storm that translate into particular sets of concerns, priorities, and actions.2The first way of understanding Sandy is as an acute, disruptive event. This perspective is most common among governing and elite institutions such as large NGOs and foundations, the entities that  exercise  the  major  share  of  authority  and  influence  at  the  municipal  and  state  levels.  It understands Sandy as a severe, but relatively short-term, interruption of normal city functions and focuses largely on physical infrastructure. The recovery goals inherent in this frame have been to repair interruptions to the pre-storm status quo of New York City as a stable, global cultural and economic center as quickly as possible, with a significant focus on strengthening infrastructure.The  second  way of  understanding  the  storm,  most  common  among  community  groups  and grassroots political networks, is that Sandy  sharpened and exacerbated systemic problems.  This perspective  sees  Sandy’s  impact  as  intensifying  an  ongoing  crisis  stemming  from  social  and economic inequality. The recovery goals inherent in this frame are focused on pairing shorter-term triage with longer-term transformations of the underlying sources of vulnerability and economic insecurity, namely inadequate housing, precarious employment, and inaccessible essential services.1 Names are listed in alphabetical order. The co-authors made equal intellectual contributions and wrote the article  together,  based  on  research  produced  collectively  by  the  Superstorm  Research  Lab. (www.superstormresearchlab.org), of which they are co-founding members.2 Our findings are based on collaborative efforts of the Superstorm Research Lab to conduct nearly 80 interviews with actors in local and state governments, a range of civil society groups, volunteer first responders, and ordinary New Yorkers hit hardest by the storm. We also draw on ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and collaborative research with scholars and community organizations.1Two concepts of crisis, two modes of responseThe different concepts of crisis we term the Two Sandys have led to different types of responses. New York City’s mayoral  After Action Report (2011), for instance, identifies problems beginning days  before  the  storm that  could  be  addressed by technical  fixes  in  the  near  future,  including evacuation orders, gasoline shortages, and power outages (Gibbs and Holloway 2013). City and state governments have devoted substantial planning efforts to long-term reconstruction after Sandy, the bulk of which initially focused on returning to and safeguarding—rather than changing—the social and economic status quo. Both of these examples are characteristic of the first perspective on Sandy.Meanwhile, grassroots and community-based organizations (CBOs) have focused more on how the storm has exacerbated vulnerability via a deepening of income insecurity, insufficient access to education, unaffordable housing, and widespread debt. For many communities, “back to normal” does not mean recovery, but a return to vulnerability. Thus, organizations like Alliance for a Just Rebuilding—a coalition  of  faith  groups,  labor  unions,  community  groups,  and  environmental organizations—explicitly point to the need for good jobs, affordable housing, renewable energy, accessible  health  care,  and  community  consultation  for  recovery  plans  (Alliance  for  a  Just Rebuilding 2013).Inequality and crisis exacerbated—the case of housingHousing provides perhaps the most telling example of Sandy’s effect on existing inequalities, as well as the ways in which the city’s response has ended up prolonging chronic crisis. The storm destroyed  or  damaged  305,000 housing  units  in  New York  City.  Poor  and  working  class New Yorkers, especially tenants, immigrants, and people of color, have struggled disproportionately to  repair  their  homes,  echoing  trends  documented  in  the  aftermath  of  Hurricane  Katrina  in New Orleans (Merdjanoff 2013). A report from Alliance for a Just Rebuilding found that lower-income homeowners are getting virtually no government funding, despite over $3 billion in federal aid to the city for disaster recovery (Alliance for a Just Rebuilding 2014). Municipal documents reveal  that  only 110 of  19,920 registrants  for  the  Build it  Back  program, or  0.55%, have been awarded a grant so far, and in January 2014—more than two years after the storm—construction had not begun on a single house.3 Since then, however, mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has slowly managed to accelerate the rebuilding process (Buettner and Chen 2014).In the case of public housing, more than 80,000 New Yorkers living in over 400 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings lost key services like electricity and elevators when the storm struck. According to a survey of nearly 500 NYCHA residents, 55% had repair needs in their dwellings before Sandy, 40% developed new needs because of Sandy, and 62% were told they would have to wait six months or more for repairs. The table below shows, for example, how Sandy worsened widespread preexisting mold contamination (Alliance for a Just Rebuilding et al. 2014).3 Ibid. and the City of New York’s Sandy Funding Tracker website (URL: www1.nyc.gov/sandytracker).2Source: Alliance for a Just Rebuilding et al. 2014.The Two Sandys framework illustrates the distinct ways that New Yorkers understood Hurricane Sandy—understandings that form the basis for subsequent actions. But the Two Sandys framework also  points  to  a  more  systemic  approach,  which  understands  environmental  disasters  as  both sharpening (in the short term) and exacerbating (over a longer stretch) preexisting inequalities not only locally but also on a more global scale.Addressing systemic inequalities: long-term, local, and globalLocally,  in  New York  City,  community  groups  that  have  poured  research  and  organizing resources into housing advocacy played an instrumental role in electing New York’s new mayor, Bill  de Blasio.  The  new  city  government  has  shown  much  more  interest  than  the  previous administration in the intersection between Sandy recovery,  long-term disaster preparedness,  and equal access to housing (Beck 2014). Elections matter. Even so, it remains too soon to say whether the  de Blasio administration will  succeed in implementing the real,  lasting improvements to the economic and social security of lower-income New Yorkers that the administration says are now a priority.More globally, while we focus on the Two Sandys in New York City, there was also yet another Hurricane Sandy, which hit Haiti and other coastal countries before making landfall in the United States. Haiti’s Sandy killed 52 people, flooded most of the south end of the country, and displaced tens of thousands of families, adding to the 400,000 people that were already displaced and living in camps after the 2010 earthquake and the 7,500 Haitians killed by the 2010–2013 cholera epidemic (Rosen 2012). In large part thanks to climate change, for Haiti, New York, and most of the world, regular disasters are the new normal.3A just response to extreme weather, at the global scale and in the long run, means that New York must do more  to pioneer a socially equitable form of low-carbon urbanism. It is imperative that long-term social and economic justice work be clearly connected to efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions—which are on track to cause many more Sandys, especially devastating to places like Haiti (and the Philippines, and Somalia, etc.). Directly and indirectly, wealthy New York firms and  individuals  bear  disproportionate  responsibility  for  climate  change,  but  remain  relatively insulated from its effects (Cohen 2014).4 This call dovetails with wider efforts in disaster research and  politics  to  push  for  expanding  definitions  of  disaster  to  include  long-term,  chronic,  slow-moving crises with a focus on populations that shoulder the brunt of everyday pollution, the effects of climate change, and environmental illness, among other systemic traumas.Disasters don’t just leave infrastructure in rubble. They also illuminate the moments when our usual forms of intervention fail to address a devastating problem. New systems, communities, and policies must emerge as the old systems are overwhelmed by social and physical change. Within this paradigm, the systemic inequities that Sandy laid bare occurred long before the hurricane hit. The goal of our Two Sandys framework is to direct the focus of policymakers and other decision-makers to the systemic social crises that extreme weather sharpens and exacerbates.BibliographyAlliance for a Just Rebuilding. 2013. Turning the Tide: How Our Next Mayor Should Tackle Sandy  Rebuilding,  July.  Accessed  29 October 2014,  URL: www.rebuildajustny.org/turning-the-tide-how-our-next-mayor-should-tackle-sandy-rebuilding.Alliance for a Just Rebuilding. 2014. How Sandy Rebuilding Can Reduce Inequity in New York City—A  Plan  of  Action  for  Mayor  de Blasio  from  Sandy  Survivors,  February.  Accessed 29 October 2014, URL: www.rebuildajustny.org/how-sandy-rebuilding-can-reduce-inequality.Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, Alliance in Greater New York (ALIGN), Community Development Project  at  the Urban Justice Center,  Community Voices Heard,  Faith  in New York, Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), New York Communities for Change (NYCC), and Red Hook Initiative (RHI). 2014. Weathering the  Storm:  Rebuilding  a  More  Resilient  New  York  City  Housing  Authority  Post-Sandy,  March. Accessed  29 October 2014,  URL: www.rebuildajustny.org/weathering-the-storm-rebuilding-a-more-resilient-nycha-post-sandy.Beck, Graham T. 2014. “De Blasio’s New Housing Plan Is All About Storm Protection”, Next City, 18 June.  Accessed  23 June 2014,  URL: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/de-blasios-new-housing-plan-is-all-about-storm-protection.Buettner, Russ and Chen, David W. 2014. “Hurricane Sandy Recovery Program in New York City Was  Mired  by  Its  Design”,  New York  Times,  4 September.  Available online: www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/nyregion/after-hurricane-sandy-a-rebuilding-program-is-hindered-by-its-own-construction.html.City of New York. 2013. PlaNYC: A Stronger, More Resilient New York, 11 June, pp. 11 and 133.Cohen,  Daniel  Aldana.  2014.  “Fortress  of  Solitude:  New  York’s  Climate  Parochialism  after Superstorm  Sandy”,  6th annual  Krueckeberg  Doctoral  Conference  in  Urban  Studies,  Urban  Planning and Public Policy, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 10 March.4 For an example study of the indirect climate impacts stemming from urban consumption, see Heinonen, Jukka, Kyrö, Riika and Junnila, Seppo. 2011. “Dense Downtown Living More Carbon Intense Due to Higher Consumption: A Case Study of Helsinki”, Environmental Research Letters, vol. 6, no. 3, 1 July.4Gibbs,  Linda I.,  and  Holloway,  Caswell F.  2013.  Hurricane  Sandy  After  Action.  Report  and  Recommendations to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City: City of New York, May. Available online: www.nyc.gov/html/recovery/downloads/pdf/sandy_aar_5.2.13.pdf.Merdjanoff, Alexis. 2013. “Tenants: An overlooked vulnerable population in disaster research and recovery”,  Superstorm  Research  Lab,  23 October.  Accessed  29 October 2014, URL: http://superstormresearchlab.org/2013/10/23/tenants-an-overlooked-vulnerable-population-in-disaster-research-and-recovery.Rosen, Armin. 2012. “The Other Hurricane Sandy:  The Storm’s Impact  in  Haiti”,  The Atlantic, 31 October.  Available  online: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/the-other-hurricane-sandy-the-storms-impact-in-haiti/264362.Superstorm Research Lab. 2013.  A Tale of Two  Sandys, white paper.  Accessed 29 October 2014, URL: http://superstormresearchlab.org/white-paper.Max Liboiron is an assistant professor of sociology and technology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and a co-founding member of the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual aid research collective. Liboiron studies “techniques of definition,” the tools and practices used by scientists and activists to make emerging, contested, amorphous forms of harm legible enough for action.Her website: www.maxliboiron.com.Daniel Aldana Cohen is a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University and a co-founding member of the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual aid research collective. Interested in deepening debates  about  climate justice,  he studies urban climate politics and urban social  movements  in global  cities,  especially  New York  and  São Paulo.  He  chirps  at  @aldatweets  and  nests  at www.aldanacohen.com.To quote this article:Daniel Aldana Cohen & Max Liboiron, “New York’s Two Sandys”, Metropolitics, 30 October 2014. URL: www.metropolitiques.eu/New-York-s-Two-Sandys.html.5

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New York\u27s Two Sandys

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