Hurricane Sandy ravaged Lower Manhattan, leading to severe outages and evacuations. While Battery Park City helped guard the west side, significant damage was incurred along the south-east waterfront. Exploring models of construction that could serve to stabilize this vulnerable south-east coastline, we worked with a multi-disciplinary team to evaluate the feasibility of constructing a multi-purpose levee along the East River in Lower Manhattan as a measure of guarding the city from storm surges and rising sea levels.
The project aims to generate revenue to cover its own costs with a surplus to potentially fund other resiliency measures around the city, and extend the city's growth by integrating real estate development along the levee. The 1.5-mile study area stretches from the Battery Maritime Building to just north of the Manhattan Bridge. This concept was one of the preliminary recommendations made in Mayor Bloomberg's "A Stronger, More Resilient New York" report following Hurricane Sandy.
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study site
