Chen Qian

The Department of Park and Recreation of the City of New York, the administrative branch responsible for the coordination and supervision of the whole PlaNYC initiative, seeks to quantify the environmental advantages associated with the project. This information will be used to strengthen the profile of the project when communicating with the public and the stakeholders. The commissioner of the study is the Department of Park and Recreation of the City of New York. The study will be conducted by Chen Qian, Master candidate from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, under the supervision of Professor Alexander Felson. Interested parties include Yale’s Hixon Center of Urbanization, Yale students and faculties, project’s subcontractors and relevant regulators. Before the LCA results are used for any external purposes, this study needs to be reviewed by a steering committee with representatives from the commissioner and the academia. The primary goals of the LCA study are to 1) understand the material and energy consumption of the project from a life-cycle perspective, and 2) evaluate the life cycle environmental balance of the urban land management project and the corresponding payback periods. The secondary goals are to 1) compare the environmental impacts of different plantation layouts from the LCA lens, and 2) calculate the explicit and implicit economic costs and benefits of the project. The LCA study at this stage will be focused on one project under the PlaNYC Reforestation Initiative: Kissena Corridor Park.