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Radical proposals to address climate change and the housing crisis

Two radical proposals. One out of Manhattan, the other out of Jersey City about reclaiming land to better protect the coastline from climate change and using the reclaimed land to increase the housing supply. Nothing will happen now, but maybe when major hurricanes start hitting the NYC region on a regular basis, these radical proposals to enhance coastal resiliency may be more palatable.

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphic...Artboard_3.png

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/o...an-expand.html

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On Jan. 1, Eric Adams was sworn in as New York’s 110th mayor. He is now in charge of the city’s response to big, and growing, problems. One is a housing affordability crisis. Another concerns the ravages of climate change: sea level rise, flooding and storm surges.

There is a way to help tackle both issues in one bold policy stroke: expand Manhattan Island into the harbor.

Last September, after witnessing unprecedented flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, Mr. Adams said that it was “a real wake-up call to all of us how we must understand how this climate change is impacting us.” This realization should spur him to pursue aggressive measures to mitigate climate change’s devastation.

Both Mayors Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg offered climate-change plans that included extending the shoreline along the East River in Lower Manhattan. But these proposals, while admirable, would be small steps and would hardly make a dent with problems of such big scale.

This new proposal offers significant protection against surges while also creating new housing. To do this, it extends Manhattan into New York Harbor by 1,760 acres. This landfill development, like many others in the city’s past, would reshape the southern Manhattan shoreline. We can call the created area New Mannahatta (drawn from the name the Lenape gave to Manhattan).

Housing
In 2014, Mayor de Blasio announced an affordable housing plan that would build or preserve 200,000 affordable units. Despite this, rents continued to rise because construction did not keep pace with population and income growth. To give a sense of the scale, from 2010 to 2018, 171,000 units of housing were constructed, enough to accommodate about 417,000 people. Yet in the same period, the city’s population grew by nearly 500,000. New Mannahatta offers the possibility to realize the goal of adding a significant number of new units, many of which can be made affordable for low-income households.

Storm Surges
Creating land in the harbor would also help New York City fortify itself against climate change. The new community would push vulnerable places like Wall and Broad Streets further inland, and the peninsula can be designed with specific protections around its coastline to buffer itself and the rest of the city from flooding. In particular, wetlands ecologies around the shorelines would absorb surges. Building the land at a higher elevation would further improve its protective ability, and the new peninsula could recreate historic ecologies and erect environmental and ecological research centers dedicated to improving the quality of New York’s natural world.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJacITJW...pg&name=medium

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Steven Fulop
@StevenFulop
·
Jan 18
In 2014 we explored a similar expansion of #JerseyCity + Hudson County on land/water that we control in order to protect against climate change + rising sea level, storm resilience. It was prepared by architecture firm Marchetto Higgins + slides below.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJacHxOX...pg&name=medium

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJacIU_X...pg&name=medium

Entire Plan for Jersey City + Hoboken here: http://www.mhsarchitects.com/plannin...-defense-plan/

A giant wall will have to be erected at the Verrazano narrows bridge and other inlets so that the city doesn’t flood. I don’t think that little wall in the above proposals will do much if sea levels rise by 40 feet or more.

Nothing says protect the environment like filling in large natural harbors with landfill :cheers::cheers:

I have an even more radical idea: Dredge giant canals and create vast new seas in the lower-elevation parts of the Sahara Desert. This will let the Atlantic Ocean spread into the newly-created seas, helping to lower sea levels worldwide. The dredgings from the operations can be used to create new mountain ranges in nothern Africa between the new seas, hopefully creating some orthographic precipitation, which in turn can make thew new mountainous areas more habitable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007 (Post 9508290)

Yes you do have an even more radical idea. One not based in reality. This can actually be completed, if only very expensively, not practically, and highly unlikely to ever leave the creators drawing board.
Yours is virtually impossible and will never go anywhere but inside your head.

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency."

- Daniel Burnham -

You would have to totally obliterate all of north Africa and dig 5000 feet deep hole in the whole northern part of the continent to make any dent in sea level rise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by photoLith (Post 9508192)

The oceans aren't going to rise 4 feet, let alone 40.

Proposals for filling in large sections of NY Harbor have been around for 100+ years.

Much of existing lower Manhattan is fill. It's hardly a new concept...

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007 (Post 9508290)

Here we go. :D Done on Paint.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...94c73ca7_o.jpg

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Originally Posted by photoLith (Post 9508329)

You would have to totally obliterate all of north Africa and dig 5000 feet deep hole in the whole northern part of the continent to make any dent in sea level rise.

Nah, I don't think it would be that bad. A series of seas maybe 100-200 feet deep in an area roughly the scope of the map I showed above would probably do the trick. After all, that's a huge area.

Plus, those landlocked nations in north Africa would no longer be landlocked. You could fill the seas with reefs and other nifty stuff for sea life, and you'd have opportunities for new metropolises all along the new coastlines.

I guess it would probably also be practical to redraw some national boundaries, depending on exactly where you made the new seas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007 (Post 9508290)

This actually was a real plan bandied about since the 19th century. Though the actual area which could be flooded (below sea level) is far more limited than you intimate.

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Originally Posted by eschaton (Post 9508430)

This actually was a real plan bandied about since the 19th century. Though the actual area which could be flooded (below sea level) is far more limited than you intimate.

Yeah, I've seen that before. But it's pretty wimpy compared to my idea.

Yeah but if we could ever do geoengineering at that scale, the problem of climate change would have already been solved long ago. Controlling the climate is a trivial thing compared to moving thousands of cubic miles of solid earth :)

It occurred to me that the mere act of doing that would help moderate global temperatures, because you'd be covering more of the earth's surface with water.

The problem with solutions like the OP's is that, they actually do the opposite of what is really needed. Adding more land reduces the amount of sea/ocean, which means the remainder of the sea/ocean will have to be squeezed into a yet smaller area ... which means the level of the sea will have to rise. Granted, in schemes like the OP the amounts are tiny, but it's still technically doing the opposite of what is really needed.

If we're going to do some sort of geoengineering to compensate for rising sea levels, we should be creating more sea, not more land.

Quote:

Originally Posted by edale (Post 9508359)

Much of existing lower Manhattan is fill. It's hardly a new concept...

Right. I've never said it was a new concept. There have been feasible proposals around for a hundred years to fill in the Hudson river for more land that could have been down for for around $17 billion in today's dollars.

https://imgs.6sqft.com/wp-content/up...river-lead.jpg

https://www.6sqft.com/a-1934-enginee...c-and-housing/

A 1934 engineer’s plan fills in the Hudson River for traffic and housing

Quote:

In mid-20th century America–particularly in New York City–a roaring economy emboldened by our ascendant international stature filled many a scholar of public infrastructure with eagerness to execute grand ideas. This proposal to drain the East River to alleviate traffic congestion, for example.

Another ambitious but unrealized plan–one that would make it a lot easier to get to New Jersey–was championed in 1934 by one Norman Sper, “noted publicist and engineering scholar,” as detailed in Modern Mechanix magazine. In order to address New York City’s traffic and housing problems, Sper proposed that if we were to “plug up the Hudson river at both ends of Manhattan,” and dam and fill the resulting space, the ten square miles gained would provide land to build thousands of additional buildings, as well as to add streets and twice the number of avenues to alleviate an increasingly menacing gridlock.

https://imgs.6sqft.com/wp-content/up...son-crop-2.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007 (Post 9508290)

a very interesting proposal with variations that have been floated over the decades (Qattara depression)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattar...ession_Project

^
That's basically the same one eschaton linked.