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The New York Times has picked a side in the fight between Miami Beach historic preservation advocates and developers supporting the recently signed Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, a law those in the former category claim will augment a devastating erasure of the local architecture character... View full entry
Pratt Institute has announced the creation of the new Center for Climate Adaptation (CCA). The initiative is part of its alignment with The New York Climate Exchange, a consortium of research institutions that will use Governor’s Island as its hub for climate change investigations and education... View full entry
In addition to overall wetter conditions, the study predicts increasingly intense bursts of heavy rain during storms — up to two-thirds wetter by the end of the century — the type of brief torrents that can easily overwhelm sewer systems, swamp cars and cause significant property damage and even loss of life, said Michael Mak, a Pathways water resources engineer. — KQED
Mayor London Breed announced a $369 million Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan a month before the report was made public courtesy of KQED’s public records request. The report indicates a 37% increase in stormwater by the end of the century. Meanwhile, the city’s... View full entry
Arup has recommended enacting a new 1.5-mile-long protective wall following the results of a new study calling for an $877 million flood barrier protecting the central waterfront of Downtown Boston. The recommendations call for a barrier to be put in place between Christopher Columbus Park and... View full entry
New York City is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers, new research shows, which could put its population of more than 8 million people at an increased risk of coastal flooding. [...]
Researchers estimated the weight of all of New York City’s buildings to be around 842 million tons. But to find the areas more vulnerable to sinking — or, as they call it in more scientific terms, “subsidence” — a key factor to consider was the type of soil beneath the buildings.
— The Verge
A new study authored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found the city to be sinking at a rate of between 1 to 2 millimeters per year, while parts of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are subsiding at a rate of 2.75 millimeters. This comes at a time when planning... View full entry
MVRDV has released a series of proposals to respond to rising sea levels in Vancouver. Working as part of a North Creek Collective team, the Dutch firm produced a catalogue of options for adaptive buildings aimed to inspire other coastal cities to “undertake immediate action to adapt to climate... View full entry
In January 2022, a team of developers, architects and environmental consultants began work on a 50-year project that — if completed — will become one of Denmark's most ambitious and controversial infrastructure schemes to date: A 271-acre man-made peninsula devised to shield its capital, Copenhagen, from rising sea levels.
But the multi-million dollar environmental project has drawn vocal criticism — primarily, and somewhat ironically, from those concerned about the climate.
— CNN
Despite its intent, Copenhageners have lodged multiple unsuccessful attempts at halting Lynetteholm’s construction in the European Parliament and national assembly. The design calls for a linear wall shielding 35,000 new homes that can be bolstered as necessary in what is called a “process... View full entry
New glass barriers have successfully prevented a high tide from flooding St Mark’s Basilica in Venice for the first time [...] The wall is intended as a temporary solution until work will be carried out to raise the pavement level of St Mark’s Square.
Writing on Twitter, tourism councillor Simone Venturini praised the structure and added, 'Now it’s time to accelerate the completion of the MOSE works for definite safety of the square.'
— Euronews
The barriers were enacted after emergency planning officials decided on not to raise the city’s brightly colored MOSE system for aqua alta events under 120cm, leaving the square and Basilica, technically the lowest point in Venice, out to dry at just 64cm (24 inches) above sea level. Mario... View full entry
Danish maritime architecture practice, MAST, has developed a sustainable floating foundation for building housing and infrastructure atop the water, called “Land on Water.” The project was developed to serve as a solution to increased sea level rise and the growing risks of urban... View full entry
New York’s Battery Park City will soon undergo a series of major resiliency projects that will completely transform the Lower Manhattan coast as the threats of storm surge and sea level rise loom. Starting in September, after Labor Day, the first phase of the multibillion-dollar Lower... View full entry
A city is rising from the waters of the Indian Ocean. In a turquoise lagoon, just 10 minutes by boat from Male, the Maldivian capital, a floating city, big enough to house 20,000 people, is being constructed. — CNN
Called the Maldives Floating City, the first-of-its-kind development is a joint venture between property developer Dutch Docklands and the Government of the Maldives. Netherlands-based architecture firm Waterstudio, which focuses on large-scale, sustainable floating projects, is the architecture... View full entry
Black communities will be disproportionately saddled with billions of dollars of losses because of climate change as flooding risks grow in the coming decades, according to research published Monday. — NBC News
According to U.S. and U.K.-based researchers in a new study within the journal Nature Climate Change, not only will the annual cost of flooding across the U.S. reach $40 billion by 2050, but predominantly Black communities will be the most impacted. The findings were obtained by modeling flood... View full entry
In December, developers closed on $30.3 million in financing for the first phase of Arverne East, a master-planned community and revitalization project within a 116-acre oceanfront site in the Arverne and Edgemere neighborhoods in Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula. Led by real estate firms L+M... View full entry
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the Mayor's Office of Climate Resiliency (MOCR) have released the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, a framework for comprehensive flood defense infrastructure to fortify Lower Manhattan in response to the... View full entry
In an effort to mitigate the impending effects of sea-level rise on coastal populations through architecture, UN-Habitat and OCEANIX are once again taking the lead with a new prototype for a floating settlement in the South Korean city of Busan. The buzzworthy pair had previously made waves... View full entry