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© 2011 The Museum of Modern Art
Architecture Research Office (ARO) – Proposed "greening" of Lower Manhattan. Parks and freshwater and saltwater wetlands create new ecosystems, facilitating greater ecological connectivity, improving water quality, and enhancing opportunities for habitat growth.
The killer storm that hit the East Coast last month and left the nation's largest city with a crippled transit system, widespread power outages and severe flooding has resurfaced the debate about how best to protect a city like New York against rising storm surges.
At a news conference the day after superstorm Sandy made landfall, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the city must plan and prepare for the reality of extreme weather patterns in the future.
"There has been a series of extreme weather incidents," Cuomo said Oct. 30. "That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement. Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality."
Before the storm, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration had said it was working to analyze natural risks and the effectiveness of various coast-protection techniques, including storm-surge barriers.
In a 2011 report called "Vision 2020: New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan," NYC's Department of City Planning listed restoring degraded natural waterfront areas, protecting wetlands and building seawalls as some of the strategies to increase the city’s resilience to climate change and sea level rise.
"Hurricane Sandy is a wake-up call to all of us in this city and on Long Island," Malcolm Bowman, professor of physical oceanography at State University of New York at Stony Brook, told NBC News' Richard Engel. "That means designing and building storm-surge barriers like many cities in Europe already have."
Hurricane Sandy provides 'wake-up call' for cities at risk of flooding
Bowman points to storm surge barrier projects in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in the Netherlands as models. In the Netherlands, a country where a considerable part of the population lives below sea level, such barriers help control flooding in some of the most densely populated areas.
© 2011 The Museum of Modern Art
Oyster-tecture implemented in the Bay Ridge Flats area, with reef, floating paths, anchorage areas for oyster harvesting, and constructed islands.
"If we had such barriers in place during Hurricane Sandy there would have been no damage at all," Bowman said.
But before Sandy and even before 2011's Hurricane Irene pummeled the New York area, a 2010 exhibition called "Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront" at the Museum of Modern Art brought together five teams to re-envision the coastlines around New York Harbor and to offer creative solutions to address the rising water levels.
Organizer Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, told NBC News that when Sandy hit, the images and ideas from Rising Currents came roaring back.
Bergdoll said he was pleased people remembered the exhibition, "but obviously not so pleased with people saying, ‘Wow, you know, you guys predicted this and then nothing was done.’"
“I don’t like to be suddenly typecast as the Cassandra of architecture," he added.
Bergdoll said a seawall and the proposals presented in the exhibition, which included artificial islands, reefs and ways to make the surfaces of the city more absorptive, are not mutually exclusive.
© 2011 The Museum of Modern Art
New Aqueous City: Storm barriers between man-made islands are inflated when storm surge flooding occurs.
FEMA-funded rapid reconstruction program to begin in NYC, mayor says
“The Stony Brook people are right to look to the Netherlands, but I wouldn’t look to the Netherlands simply because they have a seawall; they also built intelligently for knowing that their flooding is frequent," he said. “The designers and the innovative thinkers need to be involved in the thinking of these issues now, rather than having them solved by politicians and engineers, and then letting them be designed by others."
Sandy, a category 1 hurricane, sent a record 14-foot storm surge into New York Harbor and flooded subway tunnels and airports. It forced the closure of the stock market for two days, the first time that's happened for weather-related reasons since 1888. The Rising Currents projects were modeled for a category 3 storm, Bergdoll said.
© 2011 The Museum of Modern Art
The Acquaculture Research and Development Center consists of a series of laboratories and testing beds. The second floor and roof are stable, but the floating docks rise and fall with the tide, allowing for controlled testing of aquatic species in the estuarine environment of the harbor. Studies at the ARDC focus on the interdependencies of farmed species with the goal of developing a balanced and environmentally beneficial cultivation of the harbor.
Some of the projects showcased at Rising Currents include:
- Ways to make the surfaces of the city more absorptive (through porous sidewalks) and more able to deal with water, whether coming from the sea or sky;
- Parks and freshwater and saltwater wetlands in Lower Manhattan;
- Artificial islands or reefs (including ones made of recycled glass) to make the shoreline more absorptive and break the waves.
“You need to plan assuming that [Sandy] is not a one-time event," Bergdoll said.
“What is really needed, I think, is a combination of the large-scale gestures and then the incremental ones," he said, adding that the city's building codes should be re-examined.
City administrators were involved in the exhibition, Bergdoll said, and they took it "very, very seriously," but he said it's worrisome that Sandy happened in the twilight of an administration that will be gone next year.
Rising Currents continues to live online, and Bergdoll said the next step would be to put a price tag on the different proposals.
“I think what’s really needed is to figure out how to make it as a bridge from a hypothetical study to something that could become a plan of action," he said.
NBC News' Richard Engel investigates what experts say can be done to better protect coastal cities from storms like Sandy. Sandy sent a record 14-foot storm surge into New York Harbor, flooding subway tunnels and airports.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- Hispanics to Obama: We helped you, now you help us
Leave a Comment:
I don't know, but I've been kinda hoping that that cesspool of a communist liberal bastion would just some how miraculously sink into the Atlantic with that sick phuck Bloomerberg being the first to drown.
Or better yet, you can keep gnashing your teeth and getting pissed off about "liberals". Have a stroke... that might help.
It's comforting to think of you suffering your guts out for the next 4 years, then finally shooting yourself when Hillary becomes president in 2016.
Ah, your bitterness is so sweet! Although, you might look a little less stupid if you learned what a communist is.
Nice cut and paste of another of your childish posts. Folks gone and left the computer on? And Hillary's political career is over thanks to her mishandling of Benghazi and her lies after. She'll have to rely on losers like you to support her. That makes about four votes, assuming you can borrow the family Prius and get to the polls.
Typical self-loathing pseudo intellectual who delivers pizza by night.
I got an interesting phone call today, Lies. The National Museum of the Retarded is very interested in acquiring you for their permanent collection.
But if you want to let your hate and ignorance kill you first, that's OK, too. I'm just glad you're always pissed off. However short your life is, it's going to be miserable, and I like that thought. ;-)
You wouldn't even make a good a$$hole for a god, maybe a half a$$ed one that can't be controlled and lets $hit run down his leg half the time, MAYBE. A communist is YOU and your ilk a$$hole.
Midnight, old boy! Glad to see you're still pissed off too. You're always pissed off, and that's a good thing.
The more filled with hate you are, the more I LIKE it. It means you're going to die soon.
Have a nice day!
I've been shot 3 times and pissed off for fifty yrs and I ain't dead yet.
Do you think the trillions of dollars transiting through NY are liberal dollars? At this point it's not about political ideology, it's about money.
With 16 Trillion in national debt the United States can afford to protect anything. Face it folks we are doomed.
Ban sodas, and fast food. With all that weight loss the islands will rise several feet above sea level ? LMFAO
looks like that first pic is in need of an algae eater.
The rise in sea level is nothing new. Don't have time to look up his name. Years ago I worked for this guy running an excavator at a state park in Paxton Mass. He was an Early American Artichitec. He did Fort Ticonderoga and also the original Dutchmans Warf on the Hudson River. I think the Dutchman bought NY from the Indians with some beads and trinkets. This guy also ecavated the first iron works in America under a section of Main St. in Sugus Mass. He showed me pictures of the work in progress. He had to build Coffer Dams to keep the water out. He claimed the water level rose 60' and the docks were under some number of feet of silt that washed down from up river, makes sense. The filling in of silt in that area did NOT couse the whole damn sea level to rise, as a few people tried to claim. The docks were found upriver a mile or two from Manhatten.
Can you imagine what Sandy's after effect would be like if the East Coast relied on an offshore wind farm for electricity? Power would have been out before landfall, and who knows how long afterward.
Facts are, in the last interglacial, the seas were the 20 feet higher predicted when Greenland's ice sheet will melt due to global warming. Why won't that happen this time?
Global warming...??? Biden is 65. Her's been alive 1 of every 260 days since NYC was under 5000 feet of ice. I'm typing this in my waterfront condo in Daytona Beach overlooking the Atlantic and about 20 feet higher than the water in 2012. It's gonna be gone far sooner than you think... Get used to it
Depends on the turbines, build em well enough to utilize hurricane winds and you may end up with enough power for the world. Too bad thay don't have storage batteries big enough to do that.
would tidal energy sources fair better?
First and foremost, THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING. This storm came at a critical time in the system of tides, full moons, and weather fronts. Warm front and a cold front kept this storm from moving through in a timely manner. It stalled out and left more water that normal. The winds that were with it didn't diminish because the wrm and cold fronts kept the eye from moving overland and falling apart. The winds kept up for longer than normal. Then you have the periods higher tides because of the seasons and the pull of the moon on the earth. Man building on low ground and expecting to tame the tides is foolish. People building on a coastline within litererally feet of the shoreline and expecting not to have flooding is foolish. A government that allows this and doesn't require those people to buy flood insurance, but instead give them flood insurance at a fraction of what it really costs is foolish. Finally, man thinking that he can control the tides and weather is the most foolish thing of all.
Get rid of Bloomberg first thing.....that would help New York the most in everything!
That SOB needs to be wearing concrete boots while sleeping with the fishes.
Pump that heart rate up, Midnight, maybe tonight's the night you bust a clot.
If you feel yourself getting ready to hit the floor, turn your webcam on, OK?
I don't get mad or excited about anything, I only get even.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the intensive and ongoing pro-global warming propaganda campaign. If you tell a lie long enough, you will get believers. Up to this very moment, the media (including NBC News) has been continually pounding the public with the idea that, A) Hurricane Sandy was a so-called super-storm and, B) This it was the result of global warming... both of which are lies.
Very correct. Studies of lake and wetland sediments show that the east coast has had approximately half the number of major storms during the 18th though 20th centuries when compared to the 11th through 17th centuries. Communities have developed along coasts and rivers for obvious trade and economic reasons and planners continue to allow development in vulnerable area's, many times because that property may be the cheapest to develop. Since the end of the last glacial maximum (18k years ago), sea levels have risen more than 120 meters, and the northern hemisphere ice sheet has lost approximately 82% of its mass (roughly 80% was lost within the first 6k yrs). We know from previous interglacials that relative sea levels have risen as much as 3 to 15 meters (or greater) than seal levels today, and that both the PDO and AMO have varying effects on weather patterns that can't be accurately modeled. So with this information in hand already (that is the recent paleoclimate data), why are we spending $$ on possible sea level fluctuations. Simply plan and develop with the already known information and not build up along coastal regions in the northeast, Florida, gulf coast, or the below sea level city called New Orleans.
It easy ti fix. Yes were going to have global warming, but to save N.Y from this type of storm is simple. Take that dirty, smelling, crime riddles, filthy city and anyone whos been there knows what I saying and put in the middle of Brazil...Problem solved...LOL
Not to worry, spare the money, it will NEVER happen again. (sarc)
I don't get it. Why can't Obama just use his magical liberal powers and cast a spell of protection over the city? That's....that's why you liberals elected him, right? He HAS to have magical liberal powers because I haven't seen him do too much else other than go on vacation and look like a complete tool on late night talk shows. Was he unable to cast a spell of protection this last time because we all didn't clap hard enough?
No growth means no new debt to build such systems..... the post peak oil no growth economy will have a lot of wish lists...
MrEnergyCzar
Bury the electric cables. That would help tremendously. I know it isn't fancy but you high cost swamp will breed mosquitoes. Just bury the electric cables this should have happened 30 years ago.
It comes down to more people building and living along the coast.
The September 3, 1821 storm that hit New York raised the tide 13 feet in one hour. Had this storm hit at high tide and during a full moon like Sandy did the 1821 storm surge would have been just as bad. Sandy was all about timing, not an increase in storm strength.
The 1821 storm didn't do as much damage simply because fewer people lived in New York 190 years ago.
Here is a link to New York hurricanes.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/hazards/storms_hurricanehistory.shtml
There were many east coast hurricanes in the 1950s. Are we to believe that the three Cat 3 hurricanes that hit the east coast in 1954 were natural but tropical storm Irene and post tropical cyclone Sandy are man made?
Why are the man made ones weaker and less frequent than the natural storms in 1954?
dale-763548
I lived in a very small town in the Sierra foothills of California. We had a dry creek bed in town that occasionally became a raging torrent in the winter damaging homes along the creek. Most of these old homes were built along the creek during the gold rush, was - What people did starting doing way back in the 1980's - was to raise the old houses about eight feet in the air and enclose the area around the perimeter with concrete blocks. The house was then secured to this foundation. The area was generally used as a garage so any flooding would not do a whole lot of damage. Most new homes are built with this expendable lower floor.
In San Joaquin County, California new homes, built in the flood plain of the San Joaquin River, were required to bring in fill of as much as 30 feet on which to build their homes. This worked quite well in 1996 when we had a major flood event. This flood was so bad that it shut down most of the interstate highways. On my way to work during this flood, these homes built on these fills were islands completely surrounded with water. The homeowners simply parked on dry land in the event of another flood and used rowboats to go between their houses and dry land. The homes did look kind of hoaky on these islands but were not damaged.
It really is a problem of natural disasters and is in the wit and wisdom in modern architectural solutions and do a
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on city planning.
Here's a radical idea to help protect yourself from coastal flooding.
Ready?
Move inland.
Over 92% of the property damage from past hurricanes were properties located within 600 feet from the coastline, river or properties in a flood zone. Do not built or rebuilt any buildings in those area. You don't even have to move inland that much. There are usually very little wind damage to structures from hurricanes if you are over 2,000 feet from the coastline and no flood damage if you are over 25 feet above sea level or not near a river or flood plain.
The one thing everyone fails to see is that there is no controlling nature! Things that can be controlled are disease, societies, diet, terrorists, wars, etc., but nature will always win. I don't care what kind of walls the "engineers", using a very costly research plan, think they can do to control wind, rain, snow, and rising water. If it's time for NYC to sink, it will. That's why this planet is over four million years old! NATURE RULES!!