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Rockaway, Revisited

Urban Omnibus

December 7, 2022

The tenth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy came and went at the end of October. The attendant retrospectives were perhaps a partial corrective to a year of hyperfocus on the ins and outs of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project. Also only very partially corrected: the physical vulnerability of the rest of the city’s communities, coastal and otherwise, to increased flooding and extreme weather events. Since Sandy paid its 2012 wake-up call, development has only intensified, and real estate values in the floodplain have increased by almost 50 percent, according to a report from the New York City Comptroller. Meanwhile, resiliency projects remain unfinished and more plans are needed. We’ve explored many of the contradictions that define the city’s progress, or lack thereof, here, too. There are the piecemeal protections, the innovative designs experiencing excruciating delays, to name a few.

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