History

The first Eco-Metropolis conference, held at the CUNY Graduate Center in November 2004, was well attended by key activists and leading experts on many environmental issues from a wide range of organizations from across the city as well as many eco-involved citizens and students. Many felt it was the most thematically diverse and inspiring environmental event they had attended and that there had been nothing comparable to it in our region, and there was widespread enthusiasm to make it an annual conclave. As a result of this positive feedback and the strong commitment of the institutions supporting the event, the team of volunteer organizers decided to put together a new version of Eco-Metropolis in 2005.

Context

The modern environmental movement was in many ways born in New York, both just up the Hudson in the battle over Storm King Mountain and in the struggles to preserve neighborhoods from Robert Moses' highways, but our city is rarely thought of as a hotbed of eco-awareness. Unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, however, our mega-city is home today to a thriving, highly creative landscape of eco-activists of all stripes: community groups demanding environmental justice and less pollution in their neighborhoods from West Harlem to Greenpoint, Sunset Park to the South Bronx; visionary citizens reclaiming the Gowanus Canal and Newton Creek, defending Jamaica Bay and the Meadowlands and fighting to protect our watersheds and water quality; architects and designers offering pioneering models of sustainable building, energy and urbanism; food activists helping small farmers and the urban poor with farmers' markets and CSA initiatives; bicycle and sane transportation advocates; and countless eco and socially conscious entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, scientists, artists, engineers, educators, labor leaders and government officials across the tri-state area.