As New York is a city completely surrounded by and in water, the building code reflects that.
If you want to read up on that, it's found here...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/flo...cy/index.shtml
An ongoing discussion on future flooding issues can be found here...
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=202269
For any
specific information regarding the proposed tower on this site, obviously post here.