New York Exhibit Shows Visions Of A City Adapting to Rising Seas

The effects of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal cities present a new challenge to urban planners, one that inspires the exhibition, Rising Currents, now at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Five teams of architects and landscape designers were asked to envision projects for New York City’s future coastline. The plans all create what they call “soft” infrastructures — landscapes that will allow rising sea levels to flow within and around the building sites where power, water, sewer, and gas lines are encased in waterproof vaults beneath the sidewalks. The plans imagine the open spaces surrounding these building sites becoming estuarine habitats that will provide cost-effective storm-water management and revitalize the harbor’s biodiversity. The designers have conceived new oyster habitat as well as archipelagos of constructed islands to dampen the effects of increased storm surges. These new habitats will, in turn, provide open space in the form of marshland parks. Scientists forecast that sea levels around New York City could easily rise several feet by 2100. The exhibition runs through Oct. 11.