Who pays for all of this?Big cities like Boston can muddle through a lot of these questions themselves but the vast US coastline faces a hopefully mismatched response to the swelling seas. City of Boston (City reports)
Clippership Wharf is flanked by two other expensive developments in varying stages of construction, both using standard forms of reinforced seawalls and barriers to stop their investments becoming inundated.But Lendlease is embracing an approach more attuned to nature, one that leans upon the idea of living with the encroaching water rather than waging war against it – an ethos more common in the Netherlands or Venice than the US.
Deployable wooden barriers are slotted into place ahead of a storm, while an underground car garage includes water pumps and an emergency back-up generator.These adaptions caused consternation among city authorities about a gradient mismatch with surrounding streets but the inclines are fairly gentle and are still wheelchair-accessible.A more potent concern is that the climate crisis is accelerating existing gentrification of what was once a solidly working class area. The refashioning of Boston’s waterfront holds valuable lessons to other cities threatened by sea level rise – in terms of innovation but also wrenching concerns over displaced communities.The economics are now optimal for developers to repurpose the post-industrial landscape of East Boston and other neighbourhoods in the city but this epoch also comes comes with the added costs of the climate crisis.“It is an unfortunate quirk of timing,” admitted Nick Iselin, the general manager of development at Lendlease.
Clippership Wharf has Boston Harbor’s first “living shoreline” – a network of natural plantings, salt marshes, rocky beaches and wildlife habitats aimed at dissipating waves from storms and subtly taming the high tides.You get from the condos to the waterfront via a series of tiered grassy embankments that bring you down to a publicly-accessible boardwalk overlooking a jumble of rocks and, on one side, the remnants of an antiquated seawall that has been partially given over to the water and seeded with salt marshes to provide a more natural buffer to the advancing harbor.Seawalls, by contrast, often cause the erosion of land or beach in front of them and can simply push water on to neighbouring properties. We work with the community and other partners to advance our vision for a Climate Ready Boston.Looking for summer fellowship opportunities with Climate Ready Boston? Climate Ready Boston is an ongoing initiative.
“We’ve taken on challenges over time, though, and this is just the next stage in this.“But we do need strong federal leadership – frankly we needed it 10 years ago.
Just like the risks posed by climate change, the novel coronavirus is hitting communities unequally, falling largely along racial and socioeconomic lines, as new total infections in Massachusetts surged in the last week to over 41,199.In Chelsea, Mass., a city just outside of Boston where about 65 percent of residents are Latinx, infection rates are the highest in the state.
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A competing idea, to creating an enormous harbor barrier costing around $12bn, has been shelved.The task of transforming Boston into a modern, climate-adapted place while not pushing out its long-term working class is a conundrum that is set to play out in other cities along America’s eastern seaboard.
Apartments at Clippership Wharf will cost you about $5,500 a monthThese new abodes are built on a site that was vacant for 30 years, a patch of contaminated soil left over from the heyday of the harbor being a frenzy of goods shipped on to wharves that stretched out into the water. We want Boston to continue to develop as a vibrant and sustainable city. These trends will only continue. Washington DC needs to focus on protecting coastal cities, because a lot of them don’t have the flexibility we do.” City of Boston (reports produced by external partners) Developers are creating waterfront homes in Boston with innovative seawall defences but is this a model for other cities? “In four or five years you’ll see the salt marsh starting to take shape.“I think it takes a certain caliber of developer to think that way, but I think more and more developers are. Coastal Resilience Solutions for South Boston We are finding ways to reduce flood risk while improving the community.Read the report on coastal resilience strategies across the neighborhood.We're working with the Parks Department on a redesigned, resilient Moakley.Launching Fall 2019 to design solutions for coastal flood risk that address connectivity, accessibility, and equity.See the flooding, heat, and social vulnerability information that we use in resilience planning.Learn more about projects that protect Boston’s shoreline from coastal flooding and sea level rise.Public Works released guidelines for flood barriers in the public right-of-ways.The Boston Planning & Development Agency released guidelines for flood resilience in our building stock. But we have to be concerned (about gentrification). We want to show the progress we're making on the initiatives recommended in the The resources below are related to climate change vulnerabilities and adaptation planning in Greater Boston.