Perspective: Coastal challengeDesigning the Coastal City of the Future

Boston is situated along the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99 percent of the ocean due, in part, to changing sea patterns from melting ice in Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. Coupled with increased heat and precipitation, the rising sea level is threatening the low-lying city, much of which was built on landfill over the past 300 years along a 50-square-mile harbor.

In a story produced by the Wired Brand Lab for the American Institute of Architects, Wired writes that in 2012, Boston narrowly avoided Hurricane Sandy, which pummeled neighboring New York City, killing 44 residents there and causing $19 billion in damages and lost economic activity. Then, in 2018, two nor’easters hit Boston at high tide, causing record-breaking flooding. “It was a wake-up call,” says Nasser Brahim, a senior planner at Kleinfelder. “Fifty years from now, Boston is on track to have significant flooding events once a month, costing $1.4 billion annually. So, Sandy missed us, but we’ve been acting like it hit.”

Wired continues:

To save the 685,000-person city, the local government is calling on architects to help implement one of the most ambitious municipal resiliency plans in the United States: Climate Ready Boston. Launched in 2016 by Mayor Martin J. Walsh, Climate Ready Boston is an initiative to prepare the city for the long-term impacts of climate change. It aims to do so by implementing measures that include increasing access to the city’s 47-mile waterfront and simultaneously protecting it from major floods. First, officials commissioned local scientists to continuously research how climate change will impact the area in the next 50 years. Then they collaborated with architects, engineers, and landscape architects to design resilient solutions—ones that will withstand the natural elements—for the city’s five most at-risk coastal communities (Downtown and North End, East Boston, Charlestown, South Boston, and Dorchester).