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> Adolfo Carrión, Jr.
Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr. is the only elected official in New York State with an urban planning degree. He traces it all back to his year of teaching a seventh-grade Salvadori study of the built environment—and he wants to make sure every New York City student gets to have the experience.
By Emily Weinstein
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The “little old man” was Mario Salvadori, and the curriculum was an earlier version of what later became the basis of the Salvadori Center. What happened in the classroom after that day, Carrión says, was “revolutionary,” both for the students and himself. Carrión identifies his encounter with Salvadori as the spark for his career as an urban planner, and eventually, an elected official.
Working with several architecture students trained by Mario himself, Carrión’s class built models of the city’s water system, of the blocks they lived on, of New York City’s bridges. From these projects, the students learned math, science, history and geography. Their teacher went on to get a master’s degree in urban planning and ended up, among other things: planning the revitalization of “forgotten” Bronx neighborhoods, crossing a picket line to join union members of SEIU 1099, serving on the New York City Council, being imprisoned briefly in a federal jail for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing exercises in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and soon after that, taking office as the Borough President of the Bronx.
“The Explosion of Discovery”
Mario Salvadori’s method worked, Carrión says, because “The kids needed context, a base to work from outside of boring textbooks, outside of the rote experience of a teacher talking and writing on the blackboard.”
The class started their investigation of the physical city with that common denominator of infamous interest to twelve-year-olds: What happens when you flush the toilet?
“For seventh graders, this was hilarious. But it led us into the growth of the city--how all this history was packed into this private space. From the pipes of the water system we were led to the process of public decision making, who decides what to build and why, how a community selects its leaders, civic structure, the governance of cities and the history of the entire country, all the while studying physics, math and geography.”
For Carrión’s students, Salvadori’s methods were more than just an effective way to learn academics--they were an invitation to democratic participation. To Carrión, the idea of teaching kids how things work at a physical level is intimately connected to engaging them in civic responsibility. “The way you ground people is by helping them to grasp their reality, understand their environment. The fact that fewer than half of people vote for president, and that turnout is even more pathetic at other levels, shows that people lack understanding of how their systems work.”
“When you say, ‘let’s go see the reservoir, let’s go see the valve chamber,’ it’s about civics. Once they know how it works, kids who were disconnected begin to feel ownership over their city. We’re talking about the explosion of discovery.”
From Urban Planner to City Official
To Carrión, the city itself is alive. He refers to it as something “organic,” something that is “becoming,” something we can “grow.” “I’ve always been fascinated by this organism we call the city,” he says. Until he started working as an urban planner, “I hadn’t considered that being part of that growth could be a career.”
But it swiftly became one. After earning a degree in Urban Planning from Hunter College, Carrión went to work for the Bronx office of the Department of City Planning, as a liason to Community District 5, where he became district manager. After five years as district manager, including an unsuccessful run for City Council in 1993, he left the community board in 1996 to work at Promesa, a community development nonprofit. As Vice President for Human Services and Community outreach, he broke rank with the organization’s administration to participate in a union demonstration with the SEIU 1199, eventually helping to bring both parties to the negotiating table. Soon after that, Carrión more formally persued the will of the people and was elected to the City Council in 1997 with 85% of the vote. He served on the Economic Development, Education, High Education, Environmental Protection, Governmental Operations and Land Use Committees.
Five days after Carrión entered the 2001 race for Borough President, he was jailed for his act of civil disobedience on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, in protest of the United States Navy’s bombing exercises there. For the 37 days, he shared a cellblock with the other three members of the “Vieques Four,”Reverend Al Sharpton, State Assemblymember Jose Rivera, and Roberto Ramirez, Chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party. Upon his release, he resumed his campaign and won the Bronx Borough Presidency, the office he now holds.
On a warm spring day, seventeen years after his first experience teaching the city, Carrión leans forward in the chair in his well-appointed office, his eyes lighting up as he describes standing in a valve chamber three football fields long, or the mind-blowing effects of taking students up on the George Washington Bridge. “You just stand there,” he says, “in the middle of all that steel, all that cable, hundreds of feet from the water.” He transmits the awe and optimism of someone who loves his city down to its steel and concrete bones.
>>More: From Classroom to Borough Hall - For a more in-depth look at Adolofo Carrión, Jr.’s path from teaching to city politics
Borough President
In some ways, Carrión’s career has come full circle. Having widened his focus from the classroom to the entire city, Carrión now finds himself in a position to influence education policy. The Bronx is rapidly becoming an epicenter of education reform innovation. New alternative and charter schools are springing up everywhere, including the Pablo Neruda Academy for Social Justice, a Salvadori-focused school scheduled to open next year that is the brainchild of a longtime Salvadori teacher.
Carrión believes that in the realm of school reform, it’s time to “try something radical. We’re not selling widgets. We’re nation building, and that bambino is the future of this city.”
Salvadori figures heavily into his plan for curriculum reform. “We should infuse the curriculum with this material,” he says. “The physical city is the gate to an entire universe.” His office is currently working with Salvadori staff to fast-track built environment learning with city officials, including Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.
“I was lucky,” he says. “I was on a journey when [Mario Salvadori and I] crossed paths. But a kid shouldn’t have to be at a special school, or be lucky because the old man walked into her classroom. Urban kids need to understand how their environment works. The people who understand the wonders of a city--and it is a wonder--are the people who will succeed.”
