Abstract
We examine the post disaster history of a proposed resilience infrastructure capital project, the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, part of a larger proposed resilience infrastructure design called “The Big U.” This proposed ring of bermed parkland around the waterfront of Lower Manhattan won $335 million in the Housing and Urban Development Rebuild by Design competition. The purpose of the Big U was to make the Lower Manhattan coastline resilient against storms and provide green space amenities to neighborhood residents. The Bjarke Ingels Group proposal created the East Side Coastal Resiliency section of the Big U design through an inclusive process with local residents. Yet, 6 years since Sandy and 4 years since the HUD award, the project had not yet broken ground and the final design had not yet been approved. We look at this resilience project to ask the question: does this project reflect the right to the resilient city, that is, is it being designed in the interests of low-income neighborhood residents adjoining the project, creating a more resilient city for everyone? Or, will the final design of the project repeat the problems of unequal post-disaster redevelopment?
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Notes
The report, “A Stronger, More Resilient New York,” was issued on June 11, 2013. See the full report here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/sirr/report/report.page
State of the City, February 3, 2015.
Interview between Friedman and Foy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZa2-wwptw&t=1391s
There has been some controversy as to whether The Big U itself would protect against the predicted sea level rise. Climate scientist-activist Klaus Jacob argued that all of the resilience infrastructure projects so far were just “fiddling around at the margins” and, even if built, would not protect against the long-term effects of sea level rise (Millman 2017). In this paper, we focus the conversation on the goal of resilience projects to protect against “storm surges” rather than against long-term (2050 and 2100) predictions about sea level rise.
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DuPuis, E.M., Greenberg, M. The right to the resilient city: progressive politics and the green growth machine in New York City. J Environ Stud Sci 9, 352–363 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-019-0538-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-019-0538-5