That revelation has caught the attention of planners and architects in space-starved New York City. When Superstorm Sandy inundated low-lying areas of Manhattan and Staten Island in 2012, it humbled the city’s man-made flood defenses. But in the years since, there’s been a flood of ideas to make the Big Apple “greener”—and more absorbent. In one proposal, New York architect Stephen Cassell envisions a fringe of tidal marshes and wetlands around the lower edges of Manhattan, spreading out from Battery Park. In some places, the marshes would be built on open ground—such as Battery Park. Elsewhere, Cassell proposes extending the land onto the foreshore for a couple of blocks, using landfill. But in contrast to the usual practice of building more high-rises, the newly created land would be infused with marshes. Behind the shoreline wetlands, Cassel says, streets and other hard surfaces should be reconstructed so they can absorb water and let it seep underground. Porous concrete could drain excess water into the coastal marshes. “Man pushed nature out of most of Manhattan,” says Cassell. “Maybe it is time to bring some of nature back, for our own good.” The same philosophy underlies a project on the estuary of the Delaware River (the second-largest estuary on the eastern coast of the U.S.), where scientists and managers are dumping bundles of coconut fiber on the mud flats beyond the cord grass. The bundles dissipate wave energy and capture sediment, helping to raise the level of the shoreline and keep pace with rising sea levels. The idea is to regenerate marshes (which, until recently, were being lost at a rate of an acre a day) and to build a “living shoreline” on the estuary. It doesn’t take long to do. In the Heislerville Wildlife Management Area, where the Maurice River enters the estuary, healthy salt marsh established itself behind the coconut fiber “biologs” within a year. As the salt marshes form, mussels attach themselves to the fibers and filter the polluted water. This system of “soft armor” could become a model for protecting low-lying areas from New Orleans to San Francisco. BIG U The Future Will Not Be Dry THE NYC BIG U. A team of New York City designers has drawn up plans for a “necklace” of small parks along the Manhattan coast that form a unified defense when a storm hits. The pockets of flood defenses would do double duty as public parks, gardens, and art space during calm times. The “Big U” stretches 10 miles, from West 57th Street around Battery Park and up to East 42nd Street. This design was one of the winners of the Rebuild by Design competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2013 to spur innovations in resilient design. In June, the project received $355 million in federal funding. Image ©BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group Continued in next post!
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 11:18:52 +0000
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