New York City has more than 500 miles of coastline. The city’s coastal zone is home to more than 1 million people as well as billions of dollars of residential and commercial property, and no two miles of the waterfront are quite the same. The marshy areas of southern Queens, the housing projects in waterfront Brooklyn, and the towers of Manhattan’s Financial District are all vulnerable during high tides and major storm events, and each of these areas is vulnerable in a different way.
The city learned these lessons the hard way in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy sent almost 14 feet of storm surge up New York Harbor and flooded thousands of structures across the five boroughs. In the aftermath of the disaster, the city embarked on one of the most ambitious climate adaptation efforts in U.S. history. Leaders spent billions of dollars to elevate and armor the lower reaches of Manhattan with flood gates and berms, rebuild the destroyed beaches in Queens, and buy out homes in the low-lying neighborhoods of Staten Island.
Each stage of this effort faced delay and controversy, but the post-Sandy effort is now almost complete. The elevated East River Park in Manhattan is now partly open to sunbathers and tennis players. Farther down the island, construction crews are installing rolling-track flood walls that will be deployed during major storm surge events. These flood defenses will be operational by the 2027 hurricane season, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already laying the groundwork for what comes next.
