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New York City has broken ground on the important new Battery Coastal Resilience project in Lower Manhattan. The critical $200 million component of the city’s larger Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency strategy is meant to protect 12,000 businesses and about 100,000 New Yorkers. It has been... View full entry
The toll of urbanization in China has been documented in a new paper published in the journal Science by a team of researchers from different institutions around the country. Using a method called spaceborne synthetic aperture radar interferometry (or InSAR), they were able to establish the rate... View full entry
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
The City of Miami has published a draft of its Stormwater Master Plan; a $3.8 billion plan to be enacted over the next 40 years, seeking to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels on the city. The plan sets out a wide portfolio of measures, from stormwater pumps and sea walls to more novel... View full entry
Local multidisciplinary creative firm DFA has come up with a concept for the rehabilitation of Chelsea's rapidly disintegrating Pier 40 that would provide housing and other services but would also adapt to the predicted rising sea levels of future NYC. The future-proof housing, commercial, and recreation complex would rise from the Hudson River and be able to remain above water in the event of rising sea levels while addressing the city’s dire need for affordable housing. — 6sqft
Renderings courtesy of DFA Renderings courtesy of DFA View full entry
Unlike traditional buildings, amphibious structures are not static; they respond to floods like ships to a rising tide, floating on the water’s surface. [...] Amphibiation may be an unconventional strategy, but it reflects a growing consensus that, at a time of climatic volatility, people can’t simply fight against water; they have to learn to live with it. — The New Yorker
The New Yorker features Elizabeth English, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Waterloo and founder of the Buoyant Foundation Project which seeks to promote the benefits of amphibious architecture for homes in flood-prone areas and communities that will experience the... View full entry
We can build homes to sit above flood waters so people can ride out the Harveys of the future, but it won’t be easy or cheap. [...]
More than a million people live in the 100- and 500-year flood zones across the Houston area, and hundreds of thousands more do in other U.S. cities, including Miami and New York. Harris County’s move conforms with the advice of building engineers, climate experts, and the insurance industry.
— Citylab
No other major metropolitan area in the U.S. has grown faster than Houston over the last decade, with a significant portion of new construction occurring in areas that the federal government considers prone to flooding.
But much of that new real estate in those zones did just fine, a Times analysis has found.
— Los Angeles Times
The City of Houston, notorious for its relative lack of zoning codes, did in fact take future flooding into account and mandated that new homes were to be built at least 12 inches above flood levels predicted by the federal government. "The 1985 regulation and others that followed," the LA Times... View full entry
Houston calls itself “the city with no limits” to convey the promise of boundless opportunity. But it also is the largest U.S. city to have no zoning laws, part of a hands-off approach to urban planning that may have contributed to catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey and left thousands of residents in harm’s way. — The Washington Post
Hurricane Harvey is drawing renewed scrutiny to Houston's 'Wild West' approach to planning and its unusual system for managing floodwater that, according to environmentalists, greatly diminishes land's natural ability to absorb water. While local officials have defended the city's take on... View full entry
