Metropolitics

A Construction Boom in an Urban Floodplain: Long Island City, Queens, NYC

Christopher Ryan — 2020-02-11T06:00:00Z

New York City has encouraged development in Long Island City, Queens, even as the neighborhood has not recovered from damage due to Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and remains vulnerable to future flooding.
A high risk for flooding
With four of its five boroughs located on islands off the coast of the continental United States, New York City is particularly vulnerable to coastal impacts of climate change. The New York City Panel on Climate Change (2019) outlines multiple climate-change risks,

- From the Field / New York, Queens, resilience, vulnerability, flooding, natural risks, disaster, ecological disaster, catastrophe, environment, sea-level rise, climate change, transport, public transportation, Long Island City

Floods, Animals and Shared Urban Futures?

Leonie Tuitjer — 2018-04-10T05:00:00Z

When the city of Bangkok flooded following tropical storms in 2011, an altered urban waterscape erased the neat divide between human and nonhuman spaces. Leonie Tuitjer draws attention to two recurrent themes of interspecies interaction in the flood's aftermath: sacrifices and compromises people made to protect companion animals, and anxieties generated by wild animals that had taken refuge in or near human settlements.
---- Series: Climate Change and Social Change Southeast Asia is one of

- From the Field / water, climate change, flooding, interspecies interaction, human–animal relations, Thailand, Southeast Asia, Bangkok

Looking Backward into the Future of New York

Ted Steinberg — 2015-01-12T05:50:00Z

Can the lesson of Hurricane Sandy dampen the enthusiasm of New York City's growth machine? Ted Steinberg, author of Gotham Unbound, an environmental history of New York City, gives an overview of the historical developments that make the city one of the most vulnerable to floods in the United States.
How should those who rule over New York City plan for its future? Sketching out elaborate plans has long been a cottage industry in the nation's largest city. To date, however, historical

- Essays / catastrophe, disaster, environment, United States, urban ecology, land, water, New York, history, sustainable urban planning, Sandy, sea-level rise, flooding, vulnerability, wildlife