Princeton Public Library - Home

This event is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library, Princeton Environmental Commission and Sustainable Princeton. Three videos featuring sustainable homes on Princeton’s 2024 Green House Tour will be screened, followed by a panel discussion with the homeowners and several experts in green building.

Learn how your neighbors are creating healthier and more energy-efficient homes and environments with green building practices such as solar panels with energy storage, rain gardens, superior insulation, radiant heating and cooling, additional dwelling units (ADUs), and more!

About the homes:
LEEDin’ on Linden
Built to and awarded LEED-Platinum status (highest-level), this 2013 home was one of the first residences in NJ to achieve that level and was designed by local architect Kirsten Thoft for her family. The primary environmental characteristics of the home are a
39-panel near-optimally sited solar array
Ground-source heat-pump (& loop) commonly referred to as 'geothermal'
High insulation and thoughtful site-design
The result of the design is that the house generates 90-95% of all energy used for heating, cooling & plug-load. Despite being a very advanced green building, it sits contextually within the neighborhood fabric and many might not know that it was new construction.

Bloomin’ on Birch
A recently built modern home that meets the most stringent environmental standards:
Geothermal heating and cooling driven by solar panels, heat-pump water heater, two-layer insulation (cellulose and soy-foam) providing 2x the insulation requirements, Swiss-made FSC-certified tropical hardwood triple-pane windows/doors with custom glazings for solar heat gain/loss on different exposures.
Minimal utilities...sun-powered A/C!
All wood is FSC-certified: cedar siding, solid wood lumber and plywood construction, cumaru sills and deck, hard maple trim, beech flooring, etc.
All coatings are water-based low-VOC.
Custom FSC-certified maple cabinetry.
Every fixture is LED.
Extra measures installed for drainage onsite, elevation + piping & extensive underground dry-well.
Custom steel-work by local sculptor/welder for front-trellis and stairs.
Separate, fully-outfitted apartment perfect for family/rentals.
In-wall large gauge wiring for audiophiles.
Elevated terrace deck with gas, water, electric, and audio.
Open floor plan with well-designed spaces, lofts in all bedrooms, nooks, and storage.
Not a cubic-foot wasted. A responsibly-sized, super-livable green home, lovingly and locally created by architect-couple (Burton & D'Avila) and Pinneo Construction.

SustainAbeLeigh Historic
A whole-house renovation in the Witherspoon-Jackson district. The design employs optimal, sustainable building techniques while remaining sympathetic to the neighborhood’s Historic District designation.
Gas utility disconnect
Air-Source heat pump HVAC systems
Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) system
Induction cook-top
Heat pump hot water heater with ‘home-run’ style hot water supply
Old building product re-purpose (floors and siding).
High insulation values throughout thermal envelope
High usage of native wood species for interior details and decking.
A rain garden and solar array are included in the next phase but will not be completed by the 2024 tour date.

Sara Bronin, author, professor and founder of the National Zoning Atlas, discusses her book "Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World."

Following Bronin's presentation about "Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World," there is a moderated discussion about what Princeton can learn from other towns that have successfully integrated inclusionary zoning, historic preservation, affordable housing, climate change and sustainability.

Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, professor, and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She is the author of Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (W.W. Norton), and she founded and directs the National Zoning Atlas, which aims to digitize, demystify, and democratize information about zoning in the United States.

Presented in partnership with Sustainable Princeton.

This event was recorded on October 14, 2024.

The author discusses her book, "The Harm Reduction Gap" as part of the Mayor's Wellness Campaign.

From the publisher:

By highlighting the large gap in our current approach to substance use - the harm reduction gap - this book is the first step for those interested in learning more about the limitations of our current approach to drug use and how to support local efforts to ensure people who use drugs and their communities can stay safe.

Sheila Vakharia, PhD MSW, is an author, a sought-after speaker, and a national expert on harm reduction and drug policy. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance, the nation’s leading advocacy organization fighting to end the war on drugs. Dr. Vakharia brings over 15 years of combined experience in clinical social work in both treatment and harm reduction settings, research, teaching, and policy advocacy to her work.

This event was recorded on October 1, 2024.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Editors Jane Carr and Lori Harrison-Kahan, in conversation with Valerie Popp, discuss "The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings," a comprehensive collection of writings by Elizabeth Garver Jordan.

About the book:
"The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings" is the first to collect Garver Jordan’s fiction and journalism, much of which has been out of print for over a century. Jordan began her career as a reporter, making her name as one of few women journalists to cover the Lizzie Borden murder trial for the New York World in 1893. Jordan’s distinctive, narrative-driven coverage of the Borden and other high-profile murder cases brought her national visibility, and she turned increasingly to fiction writing. Drawing on her experiences as a true-crime reporter and newspaper editor, she published detective novels and short story collections such as "Tales of the City Room" that explored the fine line between women’s criminality and crimes against women. Employing popular genre conventions as a means of dealing with women’s issues, Jordan exposed gendered abuse in the workplace and the prevalence of sexual violence. "The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings" encourages readers to draw a historical trajectory from Jordan’s pioneering literary activism to the writings of contemporary journalists and novelists whose work continues to fuel discussions of gender, feminism, and crime, raising questions about who gets to tell women’s stories, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

In Conversation:
Jane Greenway Carr is a senior editor with CNN Opinion whose work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Slate and Vox among other publications. She was previously a contributing editor and fellow at the think tank New America and a lecturer in the English Department at New York University. She is the co-editor of “The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings: Tales of a Newspaper Woman.”

Lori Harrison-Kahan is a professor in the English Department at Boston College and has received multiple awards for recovering forgotten literary works by women. In addition to co-editing "The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings" with Jane Carr, she is the editor of "The Superwoman and Other Writings" by Miriam Michelson, co-editor of "Heirs of Yesterday" by Emma Wolf, co-editor of "Matrilineal Dissent: Women Writers and Jewish American Literary History" and author of "The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black-Jewish Imaginary." Harrison-Kahan graduated from Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Valerie Popp is a public humanities expert, scholar, teacher, and program designer. She currently works as the Director of Programs and Sustainability for Journalism + Design at The New School in New York City, where she develops, funds, and manages cohort-based initiatives that center community colleges and other higher education institutions as hubs for local news. Prior to joining J+D in 2024, Popp held senior program officer roles at the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. A proud first-generation college graduate, she has a B.A. in English literature from Yale University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her scholarship on modernist and contemporary American and British literature has appeared in Contemporary Literature, African American Review, and Wasafiri, among other places.

This event was recorded on September 29, 2024.

The author presents his new book in conversation with Princeton University's Sam Wang. "Making Democracy Count" explains how we can repair our democracy by rebuilding the mechanisms that power it.

About the book (from the publisher):

What’s the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What’s the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What’s the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a historical grab bag of the shortsighted, the cynical, the innumerate, and the outright discriminatory. Making Democracy Count sheds new light on our electoral systems, revealing how a deeper understanding of their mathematics is the key to creating civic infrastructure that works for everyone.

In this timely guide, Ismar Volić empowers us to use mathematical thinking as an objective, nonpartisan framework that rises above the noise and rancor of today’s divided public square. Examining our representative democracy using powerful clarifying concepts, Volić shows why our current voting system stifles political diversity, why the size of the House of Representatives contributes to its paralysis, why gerrymandering is a sinister instrument that entrenches partisanship and disenfranchisement, why the Electoral College must be rethought, and what can work better and why. Volić also discusses the legal and constitutional practicalities involved and proposes a road map for repairing the mathematical structures that undergird representative government.

"Making Democracy Count" gives us the concrete knowledge and the confidence to advocate for a more just, equitable, and inclusive democracy.

In conversation:

Ismar Volić is professor of mathematics and director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy at Wellesley College. His work has appeared in publications such as The Hill, Cognoscenti, and Education Week.

Sam Wang is professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University. His laboratory research focuses on learning from birth to adulthood, at levels ranging from single synapses to the whole brain. He is the author of two books about the brain: "Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life" and "Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College."

This event was recorded on September 26, 2024