Archinect - News

Miami Beach preservationists sound the alarm over concerning new building safety law

2024-03-26T15:04:00-04:00

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 over time.

The rift that has for years played out amidst a backdrop that includes the tragedy at Surfside and a spate of new starchitect-designed developments on the nine-mile island has recent salients in the demolished Deauville Beach Hotel and the yet-decided fate of Miami Marine Stadium.

Advocates say the new law is a guise that uses climate change and building safety as its premise to usher in what is, in reality, a slate of insidious and destructive requirements. The Commercial Observer said they also work to "hamstring the powers of municipalities to dictate what can replace demolished structures."

Pratt Institute launches new Center for Climate Adaptation aimed at researching resiliency solutions for island cities

2024-03-13T14:28:00-04:00

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. David Erdman, an associate professor in the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design (GAUD) program, will lead the center as its first Director.

Pratt says the new CCA is aimed partially at protecting global island cities such as New York and Singapore. The focus expands on the United Nations Archipelago Agenda and will include experts taken from every subfield of architecture and urban design. Pace University and Singapore University of Technology and Design have signed on as academic partners in the initiative as well.

The school's President, Frances Bronet, stated: “The Center combines our deep engagement with the local community and global networks, and our collaborative approach to critic...

San Francisco is at dire risk for flooding without water infrastructure upgrades, according to a new report

2023-07-10T14:35:00-04:00

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.

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 3,400-strong stock of aging concrete buildings (a portion of which were actually built after 2000) is also in dire need of mass seismic retrofits, as the USGS says San Francisco faces a 20% risk of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake or higher occurring within the next 30 years.

For San Francisco-related weather and infrastructure news, explore previously reported coverage on Archinect below:

Boston needs a $877 million flood barrier by 2070, according to Arup

2023-06-08T17:21:00-04:00

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 Congress Street in order to protect the city’s commercial, historic, and governmental structures from the devastating effects caused by an anticipated 51-inch rise in sea level that could cause some $3.9 billion in damages by the year 2070.

“It’s a really, really scary report to be honest,” Marc Margulies, principal of Boston-based architecture firm Margulies Perruzzi, told Banker & Tradesman. “Nobody wants to do this. Nobody wants to spend the money on it. But we have to do this.”

Previously on Archinect: Boston architects create a waterfront hotel with permeable ground floor to prepare for sea level rise

The report indicated City Hall could be susceptible to flood damage, which would also dev...

New York City is actually sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers

2023-05-22T13:57:00-04:00

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.

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 officials, architects, and building owners are scrambling to adapt to the shrinking office market accelerated by the pandemic.

The increased flood risk, enhanced by construction densification, is particularly dangerous to coastal cities whose clay-rich soil causes “material softness and ability to flow under pressure,” according to the study.

MVRDV produces a catalogue for cities facing sea level rise as part of Vancouver competition

2023-01-30T10:51:00-05:00

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 change.”

Concept for Coopers' Park, Vancouver for 2040. Image credit: MVRDV

The catalogue was originally produced as part of North Creek Collective’s entry to Vancouver’s Sea2City Design Challenge, a contest that invited teams to investigate the urban future of a body of water at the heart of Vancouver named False Creek. In contrast to typical responses to sea level rise that concentrate on defensive measures such as flood barriers and dikes, the catalogue asks the question: “what if cities learned to work with water, rather than against it?”

Concept for In Between Bridges, Vancouver for 2040. Image credit: MVRDV

The catalogue responds with a variety of possible solutions for adapting waterfron...

Denmark is moving forward with a controversial man-made storm barrier in Copenhagen

2023-01-13T14:54:00-05:00

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.

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 landscape.” Environmentalist opponents have answered back with claims of “maladaptation.” It will eventually join a currently under-development modular floating habitation from the Danish studio MAST that will take shape in segments over the coming decade.

Venice installs temporary glass barriers at St Mark’s Basilica to prevent flooding

2022-12-05T11:22:00-05:00

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.'

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 Piana, the Proto for St. Mark's, is credited with the design of the barriers.

Near-record flooding last month provided an early successful test for both systems, preventing a repeat of the November 2019 near-catastrophe that aged parts of the building “20 years in a day” according to Carlo Alberto Tesserin, the official in charge of historic preservation for the Basilica’s Procuratoria governing body.

Danish-based architecture studio MAST develops 'Land on Water,' a system for floating housing infrastructure

2022-10-21T11:53:00-04:00

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 flooding.

Image render © KVANT-1/Courtesy of MAST.

For Land on Water, MAST was joined by construction industry executive Hubert Rhomberg and venture studio FRAGILE. The system consists of modular containers made from reinforced, recycled plastic.

Image: MAST

It was inspired by gabion construction, a method that utilizes mesh cages filled with rubble to create sturdy, low-cost foundations. With Land on Water, the “cages” are filled with locally sourced, upcycled materials that could support the weight of any structure while floating. Materials could be adjusted if weight is added.

Image: MAST

Land on Water also leaves a smaller footprint compared to steel and concrete foundations, which employ toxic anti-fouli...

Battery Park City gears up for major transformation that will make it more resilient to sea level rise

2022-07-28T13:00:00-04:00

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 Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) Project, led by Battery Park City Authority, is set to break ground. Called the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project (SBPCR), the endeavor will see the creation of a continuous flood barrier from the Museum of Jewish Heritage, through Wagner Park, across Pier A Plaza, and along the northern border of the Historic Battery to an elevated point near Bowling Green Plaza.

South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, site plan. Image: Battery Park City Authority

The project is expected to last two years and, when complete, will feature expansive lawns and gardens; education, community, dining, and programming spaces; public restrooms; and universal access. The projec...

A floating city is set to rise off the coast of the Maldives as a solution to sea-level rise

2022-06-23T17:40:00-04:00

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.

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 firm behind the project’s design. Taking the shape of a brain coral, the city is structured as a traditional boating community, with a network of canals that will serve as the main infrastructure for logistics and gateways. It will consist of 5,000 floating units, along with houses, restaurants, shops, and schools.

Previously on Archinect: Updated design emerges for BIG’s floating city in Busan, South Korea for OCEANIX

The city was conceived as a practical solution to sea-level rise in one of the world’s most vulnerable nations to climate change. Its modular units are constructed in a local shipyard and towed to the city when complete. They are then attached to a large underwater concrete hu...

New study predicts that Black communities will be disproportionately impacted by climate change-induced flooding by 2050

2022-02-02T15:11:00-05:00

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.

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 risk through 2050 and mapping this over recent census data focused on race and poverty.

With clear linkages between levels of climate risk and race in the U.S., the study found that by 2050, the top 20 percent of proportionally Black census tracts will have twice the flood risk as the 20 percent of areas with the lowest proportion of Black residents.

The first phase of New York City's first net zero community has been set in motion

2022-01-03T12:55:00-05:00

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 Development Partners, the Bluestone Organization, and Triangle Equities, the project will be New York City’s first net zero community.

Funding for the first phase was provided by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). This stage will see the development of a 35-acre nature preserve between Beach 44th Street and Beach 56th Place, aiming to restore and promote native ecology. It will include a 6,000-square-foot, fossil-free building featuring a welcome center, park ranger office, comfort station, and a community center owned and operated by RISE, a non-profit organization that provides civic engagement and youth development programs for the greater Rockaway communit...

New York City announces the multibillion-dollar Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan

2021-12-30T17:54:00-05:00

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 increasing threat of climate change.

The plan is projected to cost $5 to $7 billion and will reimagine almost one mile of shoreline from The Battery to the Brooklyn Bridge with a resilient waterfront that can withstand severe coastal storms and rising sea levels. Based on the New York City Panel on Climate Change 90th percentile projections, noted in NYCEDC’s announcement, rising tides by the 2050s are expected to flood the Financial District and Seaport monthly and then daily by the 2080s. In addition, some level of frequent tidal flooding is likely to be seen as early as the 2040s.

The master plan features a multilevel waterfront that extends the shoreline of the East River by up to 200...

Busan to take the lead in trying on Bjarke Ingels' floating OCEANIX CITY prototype in 2025

2021-11-30T09:00:00-05:00

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 with a Bjarke Ingels-backed 2019 proposal for a floodproof habitat which has now officially found a home thanks to a groundbreaking agreement with the city’s government.

Now, with almost 50 centimeters of sea-level rise expected for the southern peninsula by mid-century, leaders in South Korea look to the prototype as a guide to extreme adaptation efforts that could help circumvent the challenges caused by an influx of coastal city dwellers overrunning a country of 52 million whose total land area is roughly equivalent to the state of Indiana.

Previously on Archinect: Bjarke Ingels presents utopian plan for sustainable floating cities to UN

The city proposal claims to be designed to withstand a...

It turns out seawalls might not be the most thought-out way to address sea level rise

2021-07-20T17:08:00-04:00

As the world heats up and sea levels rise, communities in the U.S. could spend more than $400 billion on seawalls to try to hold the ocean back over the next couple of decades. But there’s a catch: Building a seawall in one area can often mean that flooding gets even worse in another neighborhood or city nearby.

A new paper from The Natural Capital Project at Stanford University that examines how seawalls might impact California's Bay Area was published this spring, adding to a slate of similar scholarship surrounding seawalls that have cropped up in recent years. Other efforts have seen a vigorous public pushback where proposed.

Cities like New York and Copenhagen have mulled plans for expensive sea walls that may in the end be inadequate. Some have pointed to the damaging effects on beaches as potential non-starters.

Fast Company has more on the encroaching issue here.

Disclosing flood risk on real estate websites remains controversial

2020-08-26T12:46:00-04:00

Realtor.com has become the first site to disclose information about a home's flood risk and how climate change could increase that risk in the coming decades, potentially signaling a major shift in consumers' access to information about climate threats. [...] Still, other websites such as Redfin, Zillow and Trulia have no plans to share information about flooding with users [...] say home sellers are reluctant to publish flood risk information, since it could decrease their home's value.

Public projects in Florida to require sea level rise impact studies

2020-07-17T12:34:00-04:00

Florida's new Public Financing of Construction law requires contractors on publicly funded coastal projects to study how those projects could be impacted by sea level rise before starting work.

Construction Dive reports that project studies will need to estimate the increased storm risk during a 50 year lifespan for these structures as well as the likelihood of substantial flooding that could take place on a project site over the next 50 years. The new law also requires that designers produce design and site alternatives to mitigate these issues and for project teams to investigate the potential flooding risks associated with these alternatives.

New Google Arts & Culture initiative documents the threat of climate change to Unesco World Heritage sites

2020-02-06T16:14:00-05:00

Google Arts & Culture has launched a new online initiative calling attention to five Unesco World Heritage sites under threat from climate change. The Heritage on the Edge series reveals how rising sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme weather patterns are endangering landmarks across the world [...].

The five threatened Unesco World Heritage sites featured in the online Heritage on the Edge exhibit are Easter Island's iconic moai statues of Rapa Nui; the Old and New Towns of Scotland's capital Edinburgh; the flood-prone mosque city of Bagerhat in Bangladesh; Tanzania's port city of Kilwa Kisiwani endangered by coastal erosion; and the pre-Columbian adobe metropolis of Chan Chan, Peruvian at risk of drought and storms.

Image via Heritage on the Edge

"Above all, the project is a call to action," writes Professor Dr. Toshiyuki Kono, President of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, in a recent Google blog post. "Heritage on the Edge collects stories of loss, but also of hope and resilience. They remind us that all our cultural heritage, including these iconic World Heritage Sites, are more than just tourist destinations. They are places of great national, spiritual and cultural significance."

Heritage on the Edge. Video via Google Arts & Culture on YouTube.

"The realit...

The case for pitting big infrastructure against climate change

2020-01-22T15:26:00-05:00

The US has become terrible at building big things, and negligent in even maintaining our existing infrastructure. [...] That all bodes terribly for our ability to grapple with the coming dangers of climate change, because it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem.

MIT Technology Review senior editor, James Temple, penned an urgent plea for a renewed, but sustainable, American public works boom that could significantly speed up the painfully slow infrastructure planning process in the face of rapidly changing climate conditions.

"To prepare for the climate dangers we now can’t avoid, we’ll also need to bolster coastal protections, reengineer waste and water systems, reinforce our transportation infrastructure, and relocate homes and businesses away from expanding flood and fire zones," Temple writes. "Given those staggering costs and tight time lines, we can’t afford to take decades to build—much less not build—a single project."

A legal future for climate refugees begins to take shape

2020-01-20T18:30:00-05:00

It is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis, a landmark ruling by the United Nations human rights committee has found. The judgment – which is the first of its kind – represents a legal “tipping point” and a moment that “opens the doorway” to future protection claims for people whose lives and wellbeing have been threatened due to global heating, experts say.

The Guardian reports that the United Nations human rights committee has issued a landmark ruling that could establish a precedent for granting asylum rights to people displaced by climate change. The non legally-binding ruling is poised to inform how the global community handles up what could become one of the defining human rights struggles of the 21st century.

Estimates vary widely, but a recent study from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change posits that between 25 million and 1 billion people could be displaced due to climate change globally by 2050. Other estimates put the figure at 2 billion or more by 2100.

'Climate Gentrification' threatens communities in Miami's high-elevation neighborhoods

2019-12-03T19:38:00-05:00

Little Haiti’s elevation is 7 feet above sea level with pockets in the neighborhood that go as high as 14 feet above sea level. By comparison, Miami Beach is about 4 feet above sea level. A building boom is happening all over Miami, including in low-lying areas, but some experts say sea level rise is speeding up gentrification in high-elevation communities that historically have seen very little investment from the outside.

WLRN, in collaboration with WNYC's The Stakes podcast, covers the impact of the recent investment interest in Miami-Dade County’s historically black inland communities, such as Little Haiti, which are "naturally resilient" to sea-level rise due to their higher elevation.

Venice is experiencing severe flooding

2019-11-14T17:00:00-05:00

Venice was reeling after experiencing its highest level of floodwater since 1966. High tides from the lagoon reached more than 6 feet higher than their usual level—the second-highest ever seen since records began in 1923. Two people were reported dead. Waters entered the nave of St. Mark’s Basilica and parts of the La Fenice opera house, left boats deposited on the canalside paving stones and in the middle of city streets, and surged across more than 80 percent of the city’s surface.

Feargus O'Sullivan, writing in CityLab, reports on the devastating flooding that has impacted Venice, Italy, where five of the 20 worst floods in the city's history have occurred over the last ten years.

Aside from being located on a spit of land in the northern Adriatic sea, Venice has subsided over 8 inches in the last century. The city is currently in the midst of constructing a large-scale $6.5 billion flood control system that is nearly complete. It is expected that the so-called MOSE flood barrier will be completed by 2021.

A concrete dome on the Marshall Islands containing America's nuclear waste is collapsing

2019-11-13T13:01:00-05:00

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in and above the Marshall Islands — vaporizing whole islands, carving craters into its shallow lagoons and exiling hundreds of people from their homes. [...] It then deposited the atoll’s most lethal debris and soil into the dome. Now the concrete coffin, which locals call “the Tomb,” is at risk of collapsing from rising seas and other effects of climate change.

A stunning report from The Los Angeles Times highlights America's deteriorating nuclear legacy on the Marshall Islands, where a vast concrete dome built to contain radioactive soil imported regionally and from Nevada is beginning to fail amid rising sea levels.

According to the report, sea levels are rising .3 inches per year in the Pacific ocean, more than twice the pace of sea level rise taking place in other parts of the world. The rising tides are exposing the dome to corrosive sea water and could create the conditions for a large scale nuclear waste spill with global ramifications.

Boston architects create a waterfront hotel with permeable ground floor to prepare for sea level rise

2019-09-27T13:30:00-04:00

“We are building a 100-year building. We want to make sure it will last 100 years, but well beyond that,” explained William R. Halter, an architect for Elkus Manfredi, the firm behind the building’s design.

Elkus Manfredi's design for the St. Regis Residences allows the lowest floor of the 22-story luxury tower to be permanently be raised by up to five feet without disturbing the building's two-story ground-level restaurant. The design was created to allow the building to adapt to rising sea levels by plugging into a planned network of elevated streets set to rise above the area's existing roads.

The 114-unit complex is slated to be completed in 2021.

Greenland is melting

2019-08-02T14:52:00-04:00

More than 11 billion tons of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 217 billion tons from Greenland in July. The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tons—or 1 gigaton—of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said.

The Associated Press reports that a summer heatwave that recently scorched Europe has moved north to Greenland, where the elevated temperatures have produced record glacial melt.

While 82-percent of Greenland is covered in ice, nearly 60-percent of the island's total ice sheet is showing signs of melting, a record high, the Danish Meteorological Institute tells The Associated Press.

According to the institute's Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist, global sea levels are due to rise .01-inch for every 110 billion tons of ice melt that occurs on the continent.

Is Greenland melting before our eyes? It looks like yes.

New report urges Venice to get its climate change act together

2019-07-17T07:00:00-04:00

Venice is full of water, Venice floods, the climate is visibly changing, and sea levels are rising, so you would expect Venice, of all places, to have an official strategy for what to do about it—but you would be wrong. The management plans produced by the City of Venice for Unesco in 2013 and 2018 barely mention the subject and twice, in 2016 and 2019, Unesco’s World Heritage Committee has failed to call them out on this astonishing failing.

"We are used to thinking that, given enough will and money, there is a solution to everything, but this report says that we must get used to the idea that in many cases there will be no solution," writes a frustrated Anna Somers Cocks for The Art Newspaper and explains how a new report by the International Council on Museums and Sites (Icomos) could lay out an urgently needed roadmap for climate change action for cultural heritage sites. "It emphasises again and again: collaborate, share knowledge and remedies, educate, and—above all—plan ahead. Then only may we be able to mitigate the approaching catastrophe."

In other recent Venice-related news: the 17th International Architecture Exhibition just announced a guiding vision for the 2020 Venice Biennale.

As the rising Pacific slowly swallows California's beaches, managed retreat becomes a dividing topic in coastal cities

2019-07-09T08:00:00-04:00

While other regions grappled with destructive waves and rising seas, the West Coast for decades was spared by a rare confluence of favorable winds and cooler water. This “sea level rise suppression,” as scientists call it, went largely undetected. [...] But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.

In her LA Times long read, Rosanna Xia tells the tale of coastal cities up and down the Golden State and their increasing struggles to defend beaches, infrastructure, and (mostly pricey) properties against the rising sea that relentlessly chews away on a coastline many perceived as permanent.

"Retreat is as un-American as it gets, neighborhood groups declared. To win, California must defend," Xia writes. "But at what cost? Should California become one long wall of concrete against the ocean? Will there still be sandy beaches or surf breaks to cherish in the future, oceanfront homes left to dream about? More than $150 billion in property could be at risk of flooding by 2100 — the economic damage far more devastating than the state’s worst earthquakes and wildfires."

Bill de Blasio proposes Manhattan shoreline extension to combat projected sea level rise

2019-03-18T14:40:00-04:00

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to push out the lower Manhattan coastline as much as 500 feet, or two city blocks, to protect from flooding that’s expected to become more frequent as global temperatures rise. [...] Portions of the extended land would be at 20 feet above sea level. The city can’t build flood protection on the existing land because it’s too crowded with utilities, sewers and subway lines, he said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has unveiled the city's comprehensive plan to increase resilience in Lower Manhattan, a low-lying, highly critical area that has proven to be vulnerable to storm surges and flooding. The newly published Lower Manhattan Climate Resilience Study recommends extending the Manhattan shoreline into the East River to better protect the Seaport and the Financial District.

Lower Manhattan 100-Year Floodplains. Image: NYC Mayor’s Office

“Hurricane Sandy showed us how vulnerable areas like Lower Manhattan are to climate change,” said de Blasio in his public announcement. “That’s why we not only have to reduce emissions to prevent the most cataclysmic potential effects of global warming, we have to prepare for the ones that are already inevitable. Our actions will protect Lower Manhattan into the next century. We need the federal government to stand behind cities like New York to meet this crisis head on.”

Click image above to access the Lower Manhattan Climate Resi...

Why is Florida's coastal real estate still booming despite rising levels?

2019-02-20T13:49:00-05:00

In Florida, you will see a bewildering mix of optimism, opportunism and denial in the real estate market: luxury condominiums going up in flood-prone South Beach, and property values rising in the vulnerable Keys, post-Hurricane Irma. And though the House of Representatives passed a bill to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks, the Senate has not reviewed it, and a culture of “systemic, fraudulent nondisclosure” persists in high flood risk areas.

As part of her Climate Changed series for The Guardian, Megan Mayhew Bergman investigates the reluctance of Florida's condominium boom (and the wealthy investors behind it) to cool it a bit on new developments in the face of projected climate change-related devastation.

"Humans tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and coastal real estate, especially in Florida, may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call," writes Mayhew Bergman. "The peninsula has outsized exposure: nearly 2 million people live in coastal cities. On the list of the 20 urban areas in America that will suffer the most from rising seas, Florida has five: St Petersburg, Tampa, Miami, Miami Beach and Panama City. In 2016, Zillow predicted that one out of eight homes in Florida would be underwater by 2100, a loss of $413bn in property."