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Nature is poised to reconquer Madrid. Faced with rising summer temperatures, Spain’s capital has announced plans, reported in today’s El Pais, to seam the city so thoroughly with new green patches that its face could be quite transformed.
City parks will be expanded and restored, and 22 new urban gardens created. Vacant public land will be freed up to create community gardens while the banks of the city’s scrappy Manzanares River will be thickly planted with trees...
— City Lab
According to the report, other components of the initiative include funding and encouragement for green roofs and façades. Plants beds would be added to paved squares and ponds may be created to catch excess stormwater like in Copenhagen. Madrid's location – perched high on a plateau that... View full entry
In both cold and hot conditions, the study found, a rowhouse would be the best place to be. Being attached to other houses limits its exposure and keeps it better insulated — NYT
Ginia Bellafante reported on the release of a report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Titled 'Building the Knowledge Base for Climate Resiliency' it assesses impact of climate trends and advises resiliency and monitoring. Another group, the Urban Green Council also found the... View full entry
There aren’t many architects you would believe could hold back seas and save the world from being drowned by Biblical floods. But when you meet Bjarke Ingels, anything seems eminently possible. [...]
If New York has to build 10 miles of flood defences to protect the city from another Hurricane Sandy, why not conceive the barrier as a brand new waterfront park? Climate security as leisure amenity. You can almost hear the standing ovation and all-American whooping in the background.
— theguardian.com
Previously: A closer look into “The BIG U”, BIG’s winning proposal for Rebuild By Design View full entry
"So we wanted to turn that conversation on its head and say, well what if we let water in? How can we make life better in Boston by bringing water in?" - Dennis Carlberg — BBC News
Joanna Jolly talked to Boston city planners and architects, who are a proposing solutions to combat sea-level rise. One big idea, is canals which would criss-cross the streets of the Back Bay. Less radical ideas include; constructed wetlands and elevating critical equipment for new development. View full entry
Renderings for the waterfront park to be built alongside the massive housing development Greenpoint Landing have been released. Flooding from Hurricane Sandy ravaged the area only a few years back, so it comes as no surprise that locals were concerned with how developers would protect the area... View full entry
“The project does not provide the storm damage mitigation and storm-surge protection that is promised, or at least the U.S. Geological Survey comments on the plan question the science behind those proposed benefits.” [...]
“A project like this, where the science is being questioned by government scientists and the environmental impacts are clearly negative, it’s a poster child for where we shouldn’t do this. This stretch of Fire Island is a park, for goodness sake.”
— nextcity.org
Oakland has earthquakes, droughts and a host of other resilience problems to tackle. Now it has a Chief Resilience Officer to lead the charge.
Today, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and Michael Berkowitz, president of The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative, will jointly announce that Victoria Salinas has been tapped as the city’s first Chief Resilience Officer, a position being created in other cities across the world, as well.
— nextcity.org
Related: Resilience on the fly: Christchurch’s SCIRT offers a model for rebuilding after a disaster View full entry
From yesterday's announcement of the Rebuild By Design winners by the U.S. Department of HUD, we've got more details behind "The BIG U" by the BIG Team, who had one of the six winning propoals. The BIG-led consortium was awarded $335 million to implement their proposal for New York's Lower Manhattan, with the goal to increase the neighborhood's resiliency to future storm disasters. And with a name like "The BIG U", one can only be curious to find out more. — bustler.net
Read more about the proposal on Bustler. View full entry
Among the most pressing issues facing New York’s new mayor is how his administration will pick up the mantle of the ambitious agenda established by Michael Bloomberg. How will the de Blasio administration address climate change and increase the resilience of those areas of the city most severely impacted by Superstorm Sandy? [...] The Rockaway peninsula, in particular, has been a veritable laboratory for designers exploring the implications of “resilience.” — urbanomnibus.net
Superstorm Sandy brought the Rockaways into the forefront of New Yorkers’ consciousness for a period of time, [...] subsequently as a key reference point in debates about rebuilding versus retreating from the flood zone. [...]
The last of these sites is Arverne East, 81 acres of City-owned land that have remained vacant since the neighborhood was razed in 1969. Below, Jonathan Tarleton and Gabriel Silberblatt consider Arverne East’s uncertain future.
— urbanomnibus.net
Related Posts:The final proposals of the 10 shortlisted Rebuild by Design teamsWhite Arkitekter wins “For a Resilient Rockaway” (FAR ROC) Design CompetitionFor a Resilient Rockaway (FAR ROC) Design Competition Finalists View full entry
Rather than cooking up designs in their Manhattan studios and then peddling them with PowerPoint presentations, the teams attended meetings by the score...The result is a series of designs by committee — not a single camel, but a whole herd of options. — New York Magazine
Justin Davidson reviews the proposals from the ten finalists for Rebuild by Design, a competition for coastal resilience projects that offers its winners a slice of the federal government’s $4 billion disaster-recovery pie. View full entry
[...] officials viewed a tunnel plug under development by ILC Dover, a Department of Homeland Security vendor and supplier to NASA, to protect subway portals where grade level tracks transition to underground subways.
If successfully tested, the MTA hopes the technology could be applied to portals and stairwell locations throughout the system. The tunnel plug demonstrated inside the station is not designed for use inside the subway system, Cuomo's office said.
— silive.com
Exactly one year ago in the Archinect News: MTA Video Release: Hurricane Sandy - South Ferry and Whitehall St Station Damage Click here to learn more about this Inflatable, 35,000-gallon subway plug. View full entry
According to the experts — architects, environmentalists and civil engineers — large-scale projects like underwater gates are expensive, cumbersome and difficult to build. More important, they say, such undertakings are binary projects that work just fine until the moment they do not. — NYT
In light of the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, Alan Feuer examined three examples of how to protect New York City from future storms. The designs focus on three especially vulnerable New York neighborhoods and plans included: Marshy Edges, Absorptive Streets proposed by... View full entry