Waterfronts are attractive areas for many—often competing—uses in New York City and are seen as multifunctional locations for economic, environmental, and social activities on the interface between land and water. The NYC waterfront plays a crucial role as a first line of flood defense and in managing flood risk and protecting the city from future climate change and sea-level rise. The city of New York has embarked on a climate adaptation program (PlaNYC) outlining the policies needed to anticipate the impacts of climate change. As part of this policy, the Department of City Planning is currently preparing Vision 2020: New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan for the over 500 miles of NYC waterfront (NYC-DCP, 2011). An integral part of the vision is to improve resilience to climate change and sea-level rise. The study presented in this volume seeks to provide guidance for advancing the goals of NYC Vision 2020 by assessing how flood insurance, flood zoning, and building code policies can contribute to waterfront development that is more resilient to climate change. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit http://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1749-6632&doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1749-6632. ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to the Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

The New York Times Book Review called Neal Stephenson's most recent novel "electrifying" and "hilarious". but if you want to know Stephenson was doing twenty years before he wrote the epic Cryptonomicon, it's back-to-school time. Back to The Big U, that is, a hilarious send-up of American college life starring after years our of print, The Big U is required reading for anyone interested in the early work of this singular writer.

The Southern Manhattan Coastal Protection Study: Evaluating the Feasibility of an MPL report (the “Feasibility Study”) was conducted by a team led by ARCADIS U.S., Inc.. The team also included HR&A Advisors, Inc., FXFOWLE Architects, WXY Studio, Sive, Paget & Riesel P.C., AKRF, Inc., Ocean and Coastal Consultants, and Jesse M. Keenan (the “Study Team”). The Feasibility Study focused on an approximately 1.3-mile span of the eastern edge of Manhattan, from the Battery Maritime Building to Pier 35 (the “Study Area”). The Feasibility Study also analyzed adjacent areas that would be integral to a comprehensive flood protection solution for Southern Manhattan. The Feasibility Study concluded that: 1) An multi-protection levee (MPL) is technically feasible in the Study Area and will not induce flooding either in adjacent neighborhoods or across the East River. 2) An MPL is legally feasible within the existing regulatory framework. However, the required permitting/approvals processes will be complex and lengthy. 3) An MPL is financially feasible and could not only be self-financing, but could also help finance complementary flood protection investments in Southern Manhattan. The MPL options and conceptual development programs evaluated within the report were defined for feasibility analysis purposes; the findings within do not comprise a development proposal. The process to articulate, assess, and advance an actual development proposal for an MPL will be long and complex, and will require extensive local stakeholder engagement and coordination. The commitment to effectively address the known climate change risks must remain as the core driver of that process, especially regarding all future work that builds upon and follows up on this Feasibility Study. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5246133

Green Gentrification looks at the social consequences of urban "greening" from an environmental justice and sustainable development perspective. Through a comparative examination of five cases of urban greening in Brooklyn, New York, it demonstrates that such initiatives, while positive for the environment, tend to increase inequality and thus undermine the social pillar of sustainable development. Although greening is ostensibly intended to improve environmental conditions in neighborhoods, it generates green gentrification that pushes out the working-class, and people of color, and attracts white, wealthier in-migrants. Simply put, urban greening "richens and whitens," remaking the city for the sustainability class. Without equity-oriented public policy intervention, urban greening is negatively redistributive in global cities. This book argues that environmental injustice outcomes are not inevitable. Early public policy interventions aimed at neighborhood stabilization can create more just sustainability outcomes. It highlights the negative social consequences of green growth coalition efforts to green the global city, and suggests policy choices to address them. The book applies the lessons learned from green gentrification in Brooklyn to urban greening initiatives globally. It offers comparison with other greening global cities. This is a timely and original book for all those studying environmental justice, urban planning, environmental sociology, and sustainable development as well as urban environmental activists, city planners and policy makers interested in issues of urban greening and gentrification.

This book presents climate adaptation and flood risk problems and solutions in coastal cities including an independent investigation of adaptation paths and problems in Rotterdam, New York and Jakarta. The comparison draws out lessons that each city can learn from the others. While the main focus is on coastal flooding, cities are also affected by climate change in other ways, including impacts that occur away from the coast. The New York City Water Supply System, for example, stretches as far as 120 miles upstate, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has undertaken extensive climate assessment not only for its coastal facilities, but also for its upstate facilities, which will be affected by rising temperatures, droughts, inland flooding and water quality changes. The authors examine key questions, such as: Are current city plans climate proof or do we need to finetune our ongoing investments? Can we develop a flood proof subway system? Can we develop new infrastructure in such a way that it serves flood protection, housing and natural values?

Communities around the United States face the threat of being underwater. This is not only a matter of rising waters reaching the doorstep. It is also the threat of being financially underwater, owning assets worth less than the money borrowed to obtain them. Many areas around the country may become economically uninhabitable before they become physically unlivable. In Underwater, Rebecca Elliott explores how families, communities, and governments confront problems of loss as the climate changes. She offers the first in-depth account of the politics and social effects of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which provides flood insurance protection for virtually all homes and small businesses that require it. In doing so, the NFIP turns the risk of flooding into an immediate economic reality, shaping who lives on the waterfront, on what terms, and at what cost. Drawing on archival, interview, ethnographic, and other documentary data, Elliott follows controversies over the NFIP from its establishment in the 1960s to the present, from local backlash over flood maps to Congressional debates over insurance reform. Though flood insurance is often portrayed as a rational solution for managing risk, it has ignited recurring fights over what is fair and valuable, what needs protecting and what should be let go, who deserves assistance and on what terms, and whose expectations of future losses are used to govern the present. An incisive and comprehensive consideration of the fundamental dilemmas of moral economy underlying insurance, Underwater sheds new light on how Americans cope with loss as the water rises.