Storms, surges and hedonistic sustainability
In the face of extreme weather patterns, a network of elevated, High-Line inspired public spaces and parks look set to turn the next generation of storm barriers into global attractions
It is an inconvenient truth that largescale, societal problems are rarely tackled unless collective hands are forced.
Those with the power and economic wherewithal to take significant action rarely do so until they are directly impacted. And then? Well, then they go big.
There is no greater example of this than how global communities are grappling with the ever-burgeoning impact of climate change on our urban hubs. Especially as it fuels a growing number of extreme weather events.
Take New York. Before 2012 there was not much in the way of a plan in place to protect the city - one of the most densely populated and financially instrumental in the world - from floods or storm damage. This was despite the fact that Lower Manhattan is particularly vulnerable thanks to it’s low-lying topography and a coastline, quite literally, open to the elements in the face of rising sea levels and more frequent storm surges.
Then, Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012 flooding 17% of the city and everything changed. The superstorm was a major wake-up call as more than 100 people tragically died, several thousand more were evacuated, more than 650,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, the New York Subway flooded, power was lost, the New York Stock Exchange closed for two days and the financial cost of the damage across the region was estimated to be $65bn.
If a catalyst was needed to force those aforementioned collective hands, this was it. The impact of the storm was so great, it completely changed the way the US federal government responds to disaster.
By June 2013, just 8 months after the event, President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force launched Rebuild by Design, a competition in partnership with US housing and Urban Development (HUD) to find, and partially fund, innovative solutions to protect the city, and Lower Manhattan in particular, from future severe weather events.
This is how one of the most ambitious storm resiliency projects in the world came to be.
One of the competition’s winning designs, the BIG U is just that; a towering U-shaped barrier “like the hull of a ship” currently under construction. Designed by a team of architects led by Danish design practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the $2.7bn scheme will eventually see ten continuous miles of flood and storm protection hugging the coastline of Lower Manhattan from East 40th street where work is already underway round to The Battery and up to West 54th street.
But that is only half the story. These are not just perfunctory flood defences designed to withstand tidal surges and rising sea levels. They will also provide the foundations and infrastructure to deliver community spaces, High-Line inspired elevated parks, public lidos, sports facilities and even a “reverse aquarium”.
It is, says BIG founder and creative director Bjarke Ingels, a prime example of “hedonistic sustainability.” Sections of the project will see looming, utilitarian barriers crowned with amenities and salt-tolerant flora. Style, quite literally, over substance.
This is an interesting project from a Well-Placed perspective. In theory, the idea of a flood defence doubling up as an opportunity to deliver human-centred public realm is a brilliant one. The power and importance of designing places and spaces for people is what this Substack is all about. But in the case of the BIG U, the substance of this project rests firmly in its primary function; to protect the city and the people residing within it. You don’t get more human-centred than that. The spaces and places planned to sit around and above are an ingenious component of the design - particularly if they are able to bring more investment to the table. Just as long as they remain an addition rather than a distraction.
So, how are the designers and developers behind this mega-project using the placemaking elements to help rather than hinder delivery? And in the wake of devastating floods and storm surges across the world - last week the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that Africa faces “disproportionate burden from climate change and adaption costs” - could such a bold scheme be replicated to protect other at-risk cities and regions? Particularly in areas where capital is not as free-flowing?
BIG ideas
Set to be delivered in three phases - the first of which is the 2.4 mile East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR) - each BIG U compartment comprises a physically separate flood-protection zone, isolated from flooding in the other zones. Each section, including the barriers themselves in some cases, will then be integrated into social and community planning processes.
"We view the BIG U as NYC’s first piece of social infrastructure that both lays the foundation for a future resilient city and integrates human qualities into large scale infrastructure,” says BIG partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann.
“The BIG U proposes how investments in flood protection can move beyond funding just a basic grey floodwall - they can also raise the quality of life in the adjacent neighbourhoods by leveraging the flood protection strategies to create much needed urban parks and programming for the surrounding communities."
If Bergmann’s “basic grey floodwall” is the heart of this project then the placemaking is the soul. As for whether this element complicates the overall delivery of the barriers and walls themselves, the BIG team is quick to point out that the public realm component has been “critical to building consensus around the project” and that without the addition of the placemaking, funding would have been considerably harder to raise.
Indeed, the federal government’s allocation of $335m to fund the construction of phase one was contingent on the project meeting the goals of the Rebuild by Design vision. This included access improvements, community-orientated programming and ecological enhancement.
Then there is the fact that, along some stretches of the coastline, the barriers themselves will be dual purpose, offering a long-term use beyond flood and storm protection.
Take the flip-down gates planned for the Brooklyn Bridge phase of construction. When open, they will act as a canopy to cover the coastal path and provide shelter for outdoor markets. Once flipped down they become a barrier against storm damage and flooding as well as other extreme weather conditions such as heavy snow.
As for concerns that the placemaking element of the project could slow things down, if anything the opposite is true.
The fact that a 2.4 mile segment of this scheme is already under construction may not sound particularly significant given Hurricane Sandy hit twelve years ago. But in the wider context of what is required to get a largescale social infrastructure project of this size off the ground at all, things have moved at an impressive pace.
Getting the right people on the same page - and preferably in the same room - has made all the difference says BIG associate and BIG U project lead Jeremy Alain Siegel. And it’s a rare feat.
“Previously it would have been difficult to imagine the New York City departments of parks, transportation, environmental protection, economic development, planning, design and construction working together on a project in a very seamless way,” he says . “But Hurricane Sandy really required that they do.”
He adds that such rapid, high level involvement from so many key stakeholders was helped by the fact the proposed project offers more than just storm resiliency but also “better park space, urban amenities and a project that is sensitive to and protective of public housing.” That, he says, piqued crucial interest and investment across the board.
It is a model that should be built upon and reused, says Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild by Design which, since its creation in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, has gone on to become an active non-profit organisation spurring $4.3bn in investments in large-scale infrastructure that address storm surge and increase social resilience.
She adds that the increasing need to protect cities from environmental hazards “must be viewed as an opportunity to rethink them and transform communities for the better.”
So, can it be done?
A replicable model?
Is the BIG U replicable? Yes. Is it replicable for all at-risk cities and regions? This is where it gets complicated. Especially in parts of the world without access to significant levels of investment and resource.
Countries including Bangladesh, Pakistan and South Sudan have, along with many others, been left devastated by climate-related storms and floods which have impacted the lives of millions of people this year alone. But unless the level of collaboration, investment and philanthropic backing that drove the New York project can be built upon and rolled out on a global scale, it is hard to see how costly projects like this could come to fruition in some of the world’s most at-risk regions.
That’s not to say BIG doesn’t recognise the importance of the BIG U’s “essential replicability”. The proposed designs for New York, it says, are not simply a response tailored to the Lower East Side and Downtown communities of Manhattan. A toolkit was developed during the original BIG U planning process to help other cities apply similar strategies and solutions - or in BIG’s words, “a flexible menu of solutions and approaches that can apply around the world” - along their own waterfronts and coasts.
“From Bangkok to Venice, Dhaka to Miami, at-risk cities and coastal areas are investigating defences to protect millions of people and key infrastructure from the effects of global warming,” adds BIG. “The BIG U’s segments embody a catalogue of adaptive strategies that can be applied at myriad physical scales in other waterfront communities. Moreover, its thesis that protection should enhance communities not only physically but also ecologically, economically, and socially, stands to redefine designers’ and policymakers’ approach to resilience and sustainability worldwide.”
It’s true that a vast chunk of the model’s design and development has already been researched, tested and documented thanks to the investment and expertise ploughed into the New York project. This could well be of great use and value to other at-risk cities and countries with the resources available to take action. Indeed cities including Miami, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago are all allocating significant investment into stormwater management in the US alone.
But for those battling extreme poverty it will likely remain a different story despite the fact this is where protection is so desperately needed. Taking Africa as just one example - and there are many - the aforementioned World Meteorological Organization report out last week revealed that, on average, African countries are losing 2-5% of Gross Domestic Product and many are diverting up to 9% of their budgets responding to climate extremes.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of climate adaption is estimated to be between $30-50bn a year over the next decade and it is expected that by 2030 up to 118 million extremely poor people (those living on less than $1.90 a day) will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa if adequate measures are not put in place.
If there is a quick-fix solution to this problem, I have yet to hear it. Actually, if there is any solution to this problem, quick-fix or otherwise, I have yet to hear it.
We live in a complicated world. Answers to wide-reaching, societal issues like these are rarely as simple as those with the ways, means and resources stepping in to help those without. That doesn’t stop me from feeling like, in this case, it really should. Be that simple, I mean.
We have so much expertise across our global design, innovation and development communities. The next step must be to find a way to broaden the reach of projects like the BIG U.
Humans in isolation are no match for Mother Nature. But collective, cohesive, democratised human-centred design might just be.
- Check my full video interview with associate and BIG U project lead Jeremy Alain Seigel here. He will also be speaking live at CREtech New York on social infrastructure in New York on November 14th.
Emily Wright is a real estate and technology journalist contributing to titles including WIRED, GQ, The Spaces, The Evening Standard, The Times and The Telegraph. She spent 12 years of her career at EG where she worked as both tech editor and then head of content. She has interviewed major players from both within and outside the property industry including Zaha Hadid, Sidewalk Labs' Dan Doctoroff, Lord Richard Rogers, Daniel Libeskind, Donald Trump and Sir Terence Conran.
Emily is now head of content at CREtech where she specialises in curating content and interviewing speakers from across the built world with a focus on innovation and sustainability. She is also a freelance journalist, contributing editor, moderator and keynote speaker focussed on design, development, cities, innovation and ESG.
