Disaster Resilient Cities by Cathy Yarwood

DISASTER RESILIENT CITIES * THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN COASTLINE

* CATHY YARWOOD MA (HONS) ARCHITECTURE ESALA EDINBURGH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE 2013

ABSTRACT

Hurricane Sandy hit the New York Metropolitan coastline at 20:00 ETD on October 29, 2012. In just a few hours, the urban systems of sites all along the coastline were severely disrupted by the disaster, as the applied human layers of each site collided with their natural hazardous layers. The disaster was an American one, and the national frameworks that exist to counter such chaos have come to represent a national level of disinterest and neglect for disaster mitigation, from federal to personal scales, and those attitudes are amplified along the New York Metropolitan coastline where the potential for profit is extreme. Despite a shared American basis for disaster, sites’ expressions of recovery and post-disaster action take on different extremes. This work identifies three case studies through which a range of contextual differences are explored. Its aim is to understand the effects of the disaster and identify the first actions towards recovery at each site, collecting empirical data to ultimately develop a theory behind each sites’ prevailing attitudes towards resilience. Each sites’ human fabrics - social, economic and political compositions - were disrupted just as their urban fabrics were. The weighting of such compositions have a huge influence on the lasting impacts of disasters, determining the interests, capabilities and vulnerabilities that carry through after disaster. A site’s postdisaster narrative owes a lot to the identity it has created for itself.

5Â CONTENTS

* SYNOPSIS * CHAPTER 1 AN AMERICAN DISASTER 1.1 The Coastline and the Disaster 1.2 What makes a Disaster? 1.3 Attitude of America and the Metropolitan coastline to disaster 1.4 Perception to Hazard 1.5 Urban Resilience * CHAPTER 2 THE CASE STUDY SITES Seaside Heights, New Jersey Battery Park City, Manhattan The Rockaways, Queens 2.1 The Varied Histories and Characters 2.2 The Disaster Characteristics - A Collection of Images and Narratives - Action Case Study 2.3 The Disaster Recovery Action Plans * CHAPTER 3 ANALYTICAL OVERVIEW 3.1 Cultural and Institutional Attitudes towards Disaster and Resilience 3.2 Critique to the Frameworks, Planning Systems and Codes 3.3 Positive advancement in the Metropolitan coastline * CONCLUSION Identity and Resilience * REFERENCES & APPENDICES

FIGURES

SYNOPSIS 1 The New York Metropolitan coastline, three case study sites highlighted CHAPTER 2 2 Location of case study sites

3 4 5 6, 7, 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Case Study Site – Seaside Heights Seaside Heights aerial image. Destruction to Seaside Heights’ Casino Pier and collapsed Jet Star Rollercoaster Sand forced inland in Seaside Heights and buildings dislodged from foundations Screenshots of Seaside Heights’ boardwalk recovery, from live stream site EarthCam on March 22, 2013, April 9, 2013, and April 23, 2013 Case Study Site – Battery Park City Lower Manhattan aerial image, Battery Park City’s landfill site boundary outlined Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel flooded, as seen from Battery Park City side Goldman Sachs’ preparations to headquarters in Battery Park City prior to Hurricane Sandy Illustration showing floor area ratio (FAR 1.0) Case Study Site – The Rockaways Rockaway Peninsular aerial image Destruction debris at Rockaway Park Destruction and NYCHA buildings at Far Rockaway House at Rockaway Park in process of being raised above flood elevation level

CHAPTER 3 Case Study – Positive Advancements 17 Aerial image showing Lower Manhattan and Long Island City, Hunters Point South Site CONCLUSION 18 Seaside Heights – a typical postcard image 19 Battery Park City – New York Magazines cover image, November 3 Issue 20 The Rockaways – no lasting pre- or post-disaster image to reference

LIST OF ACRONYMS FEMA NFIP ABFE FIRMs AIA HUD BPCA NYCHA CDBG-DR MIT

Federal Emergency Management Agency National Flood Insurance Program Advisory Base Flood Elevation Flood Insurance Rate Maps American Institute of Architects Department of Housing and Urban Development Battery Park City Authority New York City Housing Authority Community Development Block Grant DisasterRecovery Massachusetts Institute of Technology

PREFACE I introduce this work with an overriding personal sensitivity for the disaster event and the region it describes, routing from the devastation of my own apartment inland in Brooklyn, New York through wind damage during Hurricane Sandy on the 29th October 2012. This case was atypical to the area, a singular event and as such does not promote further analytical study through this work. What this event, and my months spent in the city after it, initiated was a deep interest and active following in the varied attitudes that such a disaster could provoke along the Metropolitan Areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s single coastline. The events hosted by American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and its Design for Risk and Reconstruction committee in the Centre for Architecture in Lower Manhattan allowed for a constant involvement in the complex topic in its postdisaster activity, offering a lasting communication with those leading the discussions contributing to this work.

Figure 1 The New York Metropolitan coastline, three case study sites highlighted

SYNOPSIS The New York Metropolitan area is made up of an intensely varied urban morphology - its coastline depicts erratically contrasting stories of wealth, economic growth, global success, urban fabric, political leadership, and poverty. In the interaction of the coastline with a disaster such as Hurricane Sandy, the event may be distilled to the main forces at play; those of the existing urban systems, the climatic hazard itself, and stakeholders or vulnerable groups affected. Each community experienced the event through an American framework for disaster and it is this American attitude that acts as the first filter to the post-disaster action. The distribution of weight between the primary forces at the scale of the state and local community further directs post-disaster action, exposing the prevailing attitudes and resulting responses in distinct locations of distinct identities. The coastline and the disaster under its American context is introduced in Chapter 1, initiating an understanding into the systems a nation has set up to deal with such events, and to explore in parallel the ingrained disaster culture that it provokes. Three case study sites are introduced in Chapter 2; Seaside Heights in New Jersey, Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, and the Rockaways in Queens to explore the multiplicity of attitudes towards disaster. All sites belong to a common coastline and all responded and continue to respond to Hurricane Sandy’s legacy differently. The research into these areas not only promotes a scientific understanding of what physically happened to the built environment in each distinct case but also investigates the context of each case to ultimately critique on the responses on a more perceptive and intuitive scale. To this effect, each case study incorporates a particular ‘activity’ case study, a first sign of action from which a further lasting attitude towards resilience can be projected. From these case studies, the work turns to that of a wider analytical overview. Chapter 3 draws on the initial post-disaster actions each case study site exposed, to consider the idealized goals of recovery and attitudes towards resilience that each presents in a more holistic sense. The work offers such analysis in parallel to a critique of the American context in which the post-disaster action is set, promoting a nuanced understanding of the varying depth to a city’s resilience. The work builds up a complex narrative around all sites, and is concluded with a discussion of the identity that is being defended at each site after disaster. This discussion of identity draws on all that leads up to it, while posing a simple question to be reflected upon with fresh eyes.

The overriding message from the organisations and committees born out of this disaster is the urge to take this opportunity to reconsider the make up of the areas that were devastated, to reconsider the operating systems of the city, and to reconsider land-use. The message sits in parallel with each sitesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; immediate urges and pressures following disaster to salvage themselves. The urban, social, economic and political situations constituting each sitesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; identity influences the extent to which this message filters in to the urban fabric of the coastline. The study of this work becomes one of how these identities of the New York Metropolitan coastline become wholly important to the patterns of recovery and attitudes towards resilience after disaster.

CHAPTER 1 AN AMERICAN DISASTER * Chapter 1.1

The Coastline and the Disaster The New York Metropolitan coastline stretches from New York’s natural harbor at the base of Manhattan more than 125 miles east and 150 miles south into New Jersey State in an extended string of barrier islands that tie the two states to the Atlantic Ocean. The coastline over time acquired an intensely high value and popularity for habitation, developing to what it is today - an extension of the Metropolitan States right up to the waterfront, or, considered more provokingly, a delicate landform urbanized along its coastal length before spreading inland. The geometry of the coastline focuses the energy of storms into the natural harbor at the meeting of the two states coasts, making the area the most vulnerable on the Eastern Sea Board.1 Extensive development of much of the coastline took place before an attitude had been developed towards how to construct and live in such environments in symbiosis with the hazards they present. In many senses that attitude remains undeveloped, and the extreme risk to such hazards are typically neglected concerns brought to the forefront during extreme events such as Hurricane Sandy. On October 29, 2012, at around 20:00 EDT, Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm surge measured 8.9 feet at its highpoint, inundating and severely affecting regions of the State’s shore and the extensively developed barrier islands.2 Narrow strips of sand that lie parallel to the mainland coast, the barrier islands are the immediate landform to receive and absorb the ocean’s waves. The storms counter clockwise rotation meant the hazard characteristics varied dependent on the sites position relative to the eye of the storm. To the south, extremely high winds were experienced in the direction of the Ocean, and tremendous rainfalls were felt, many coastal buildings in New Jersey became uninhabitable and condemned following the storm.3 New York City fell into the storms northwest quadrant with the strongest winds forcing walls of water inland by the storm surge. At Battery Park, Manhattan’s southern

Aerts et al., Climate Adaption and Flood Risk in Coastal Cities, (Oxon: Earthscan, 2012), 266. U.S., New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Action Plan, Mar 27, 2013, (Trenton: Department of Community Affairs, 2013), 9. 3 Chris Kirkham and John Rudolf. “Jersey Shore Development Failures Exposed by Hurricane Sandy” The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/jersey-shoredevelopment_n_2267557.html#slide=more268414 [Accessed Jan 20, 2013] 1 2

most tip, water levels reached an unprecedented 14.1 feet. New Yorker’s ability to live and work in the city’s building stock was compromised in two ways: through immediate damage from storm surge and wind and through outages from damage to power, gas and water networks. The power and strength with which the storm hit and the destruction it left in its wake resulted from a worst-case scenario combination of weather patterns that was estimated a less than 1 percent chance of happening in any given year.4 The storm coincided with a full moon that caused high tides approximately 5 percent higher than normal. The coastline faced some common disaster characteristics along its entirety - critical public and private infrastructure were damaged, and left many vulnerable to limited access to food, healthcare, and other critical lifesaving functions.5 The storm caused major damage to both states waterfront and coastal infrastructures, including beaches, boardwalks, and waterfront structures. Hurricane Sandy was not the first time this coastline has been touched by disaster, but the extremity of the devastation caught global attention in a way that suggests a lasting attention to the issues it provokes. The hazard characteristics of a coastline are often oversimplified to that of a single landform touched by a single hazard, but the complexities of disaster within this apparent simplicity is what this work insists on exploring. The multitude of urban, social, economic and political fabrics that make up that single coastline are what provokes the wide range of responses arising from their individual post-disaster situations. * Chapter 1.2

What makes a Disaster? A coastline morphology is one that is capable of accepting environmental events as natural and necessary alterations to the environment – as hazards to which a coastline will naturally adapt. The barrier islands that make up the New York Metropolitan coastline are features in these respects – ‘untouched’ they have the capability to adapt. It is when the human condition is applied as a further layer to these stretches, and a coastline becomes defined more strongly by its urban morphology than its natural, that hazards are no longer to be considered in such terms of natural processes but as one whose impacts are ‘disastrous’ as they

U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. “National Hurricane Protection Scheme.” http://www.fema.gov/pdf/plan/prevent/nhp/nhp_faqs.pdf [Accessed 01 Mar 2013] 5 U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, Jan 29, 2013, (New York: The City of New York, 2013), 4. 4

involve damages to those human layers of population and infrastructure. The developed Metropolitan coastline has an attitude shifted towards the human aspects of the coastline more so than the natural – the primary focus after major coastal hazard events is no longer on the natural processes of coastal adaptation associated with it, but instead of an attitude where effects are measured by lives lost, property damages, economic loss and social disruption, hence disastrous.6 Klaus Jacobs, geologist at the forefront of debates on coastal hazards in the New York region, emphasizes this fact when he says in a recent interview, “the term 'natural disaster' is a misnomer, they are natural events. Some are extreme, but they are part of the regular natural process. So the disaster part is us.” 7 New York City arose as a trading post, its harbor its economic catalyst enabling a scale of trade and access with the world. Many cities have arisen out of the offerings of an area’s nature, and upon settlement, those cities and the density of people that constitute them, do what they can to abstract and control that nature towards human benefit, by bridging rivers, paving roads and raising levees.8 The New York Metropolitan area offers an extensive length of coastline environment which was urbanized for an array of reasons, some of which this work will touch upon. The extent and density of development of this coastline acts as an extreme representation of the growth trends in coastal areas throughout the United States and on a global scale. The nation’s 451 coastal counties contain just over 50 percent of the U.S. population, yet only account for about 20 percent of the total U.S. land area. During the last decade, 17 of the 20 fastest growing counties were located along the coast. 9 With an insistence felt in America, and indeed globally, on coastal development there is an obvious consequence of increasing human exposure to natural hazards associated to these parts, and as such the destructive potential of events such as Hurricane Sandy is intensified. Lewis Mumford argues that cities are socially constructed environments in which humans transform and control nature.10 With this in mind, each case study in Chapter 2 discusses its own site’s overlaying of a socially constructed urban morphology onto that coastline’s nature, and alludes to how, if at all, each site has vested an interest in participating in and ‘controlling’ that nature to varying degrees.

C. Colten, R. Kates and S. Laska, Community Resilience- Lessons from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, (Columbia: CARRI, 2011), X. 7 Klaus Jacobs, “Designing the City after Superstorm Sandy” (Lecture, AIANY Centre for Architecture, Nov 15, 2012) 8 Philip Steinberg and Rob Shields, What is a City? : Rethinking the urban after Hurricane Katrina, (Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 23. 9 C. Main and S. Ward, Population at Risk from Natural Hazards, (Maryland: NOAA, 1998), 4. 10 Steinberg and Shields, What is a City, 6. 6

Market-driven urbanization has transgressed environmental common sense in America for generations.11 The vulnerability to destructive storms has been the coastal city’s corollary of gaining certain benefits of location. As such the natural and social systems of an urban place, made up of the choices of its individual people and public agencies, interact and the hazard is made human. Each situation represents the trade-off between economic return and social risk.12 An intense interaction of the natural and human systems was forced upon the many communities lining the New York Metropolitan coastline during Hurricane Sandy. In Sandy’s aftermath, each case study can be considered a disaster site according to the aforementioned discussion. Through each forced interaction with a hazard, the site’s attitude, vulnerabilities and imminent intentions become exposed and more easily read. Cities are dense by definition, and when their systems become disrupted through disaster, the impacts are amplified and made more severe through this density. * Chapter 1.3

Attitude of America and the Metropolitan coastline to disaster the people, the built environment, the governmental frameworks The disastrous results associated with the nation’s development of vulnerable land is an issue that has hesitantly soaked up into the nation’s systems and frameworks through an extended history of catastrophic examples. In the United States, flood-related responsibilities are shared; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the agency responsible for emergency management on the national level, while it is state and local governments who are responsible for land-use and zoning decisions that shape floodplain and coastal development.13 Prior to this system coming into being in 1978, a matrix of government and non-governmental agencies had been responsible for aid on an ad hoc basis with the only nationwide framework being the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) that Congress enacted in 1967.14 Prompted by a series of national disasters, an alternative was necessary to replace the nationally funded ad hoc disaster assistance that was proving financially debilitating. The two schemes absorbed into one as FEMA administered the

Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 9. Ian Burton, Robert Kates and Gilbert White, The Environment as Hazard, (New York: The Guilford Press, 1993), 23. 13 U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. “National Hurricane Protection Scheme.” 14 C. Colten, R. Kates and S. Laska, Community Resilience- Lessons from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, (Columbia: CARRI, 2011), 7. 11 12

NFIP taking on the associated responsibilities of identifying flood-hazard areas based on the impacts of the 100-year flood event, making flood risk maps, setting flood insurance premiums, and providing design standards for construction in floodplains.15 Insurance The American governmental frameworks regarding disaster have long been hinged on the insurance industry. Prior to 1950s, floods were typically covered in standard homeowner policies. Flood disasters continually involved far more people at one time than any other disasters, with the amount of people with insurance not offsetting the claims paid for those affected, and by the 1960’s most insurance companies simply stopped offering policies. Property losses from flood damage suddenly became the responsibility of the property owner, although, the various national disaster aid resources were often stretched to cover and assist those affected, resulting in unsustainable national losses. The introduction of the National Flood Insurance Program enabled homeowners to purchase subsidized insurance coverage against flood damage under conditions that most commercial insurance companies refused to cover in standard insurance policies, involving those households in a national type of public risk pool with a disaster loss protection that would otherwise be unavailable.16 Attitude towards Risk The federal schemes dealing with natural hazards placed an emphasis on risksharing attitudes rather than risk-avoidance initiatives, developing an attitude that filtered down into the individuals inhabiting the places where social and hazardous environmental systems critically interacted.17 In stepping in where insurance companies shied away the federal government initiated a flood insurance program that had a perverse effect in encouraging people to settle in high-risk areas.18 The local governments often ignored the potential for loss at these sites, operating under the premise that the federal government will blunt any economic costs that occur by offering economic relief following a damaging event, an attitude to be expanded upon in this work in one of the case studies. The traits of such an attitude appear in a recurrent problem for the National Flood Insurance Program –where certain existing buildings in a floodplain suffer flood damage repeatedly over time because they were built in very high-risk areas. About 1 percent of the properties insured by the NFIP nationally are defined as ‘repetitive loss properties’, yet these have suffered about 38 percent of all flood claims since 1978.19

Aerts et al., Climate Adaption, 167. Ibid., 166. 17 Cutter et al., Community and Regional Resilience, 6. 18 The Drowning City, BBC Radio 4 radio broadcast. Feb 18, 2013. 19 Aerts et al., Climate Adaption, 169. 15 16

Alongside those who have been extended a hand to perpetual loss protection through their prior existence in a floodplain, the federal government has historically exercised strong support for encouraging intensive development in areas exposed to natural hazards while exercising weak support for land-use planning initiatives. Federally constructed projects of risk-reduction to enable such urban development - seawalls, dams, levees, and costly beach renourishment programs - all contribute to furthering a nation-wide attitude towards risk. 20 Projects providing an immediate veil of safety despite the continued risk from powerful hazard events facilitate high-risk development in hazardous areas. Through the act of engineered projects the government has metaphorically rebranded those areas as reasonably safe and profitable places for development. Communities behind these projects intensify development and underestimate their risk.21 The invoking of a false sense of security is a characteristic held throughout America – the perception of all flood risk being eliminated, of the land being ‘controlled’, and a sense of complacency towards the hazardous environment are all factors that influence people to continue to lay an urban layer over hazardous sites. The myopic attitude towards high-risk development is cemented in the knowledge that the cost of disasters is being picked up by the public. The attitude towards risk in America begins to be understood in relation to the role of the government and state on one side, and private enterprise on the other, both heavily ingrained aspects of American society. Issue of Control Control issues over the frameworks set out appear on various scales. The first being that it is the local governments of communities who decide, on a voluntary basis, whether they want to join the National Flood Insurance Program.22 The program achieves a national risk reduction through imposing of minimum requirements for local government’s flood-zoning and building codes. If a community chooses not to participate, those requirements do not apply yet the community will inevitably continue to place great economic strain on the federal resources in the event of a disaster. On the scale of the at-risk individual within a program-participating community, the mandatory purchase of flood insurance only applies to federally backed mortgages of homeowners in the 1/100-year flood zone, while there are no obligations for renting tenants to purchase flood insurance.23 Many homeowners drop the coverage once their homes have been paid off because they are only

R. Burby et al., “Unleashing the power of planning to create disaster-resistant communities.” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol 65, Issue 3 (1999): 247–258. 21 U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. “National Hurricane Protection Scheme.” 22 Aerts et al., Climate Adaption, 167. 23 Ibid., 176. 20

required to purchase insurance for the portion of the mortgage that is outstanding. The market penetration of flood insurance has been markedly low for all these reasons - only about 49 per cent of single-family homes in the 1/100-year flood zone carry NFIP flood insurance. 24

* Chapter 1.4

Perception to Hazard An important factor in terms of determining response Reflecting on an American attitude towards disaster becomes more pungent if the further intricacies of disaster-prompted perceptions can be captured as a story alongside the larger scale frameworks America has composed to deal with them. Media forced perception Disasters have adopted a powerful duality in people’s perception towards them. Heavily influenced by social phenomena, they maintain their quality as an incomprehensible interruption to our ordered and controlled lives, whilst becoming unnervingly recognizable and familiar to our well-trained popularculture imaginations. Americans have been imagining New York City’s destruction for centuries and its notion has proliferated through novels, films, the arts and computer games. 25 In particular a series of climatic apocalyptic films have offered a strange familiarity in the image of natural disaster. Hitting the East Coast just before Halloween, Hurricane Sandy was branded ‘Frankenstorm’ prior to its arrival; 26 the hazard interpreted with a level of fantasy and lightness of imagination. The overfamiliarity and film-like disaster quality prevailed into the experience of the disaster where the applied media layer felt wholly influential to the cities immediate perception towards it. Social media sharing and the 24-hour news cycle combined to create a way in which the storm was commonly experienced through its virtual narrative over that of its reality - seen through screens first and through the window second.

U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. “National Hurricane Protection Scheme.” Thomas J. Campanella and Lawrence J. Vale, The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 75. 26 Notes: Jim Cisco, coined this term when reporting data from NOAA Hydrometeorological Prediction Centre 24 25

Throughout recent history, premonitions and fantasies of destruction have followed the real fears of a city’s people, with the common theme tested being the city’s weaknesses and lack of preparedness. 27 Interestingly, this testing of weakness in popular culture often culminates in an opportunity to project a new Eden, to re-imagine a better city. In fiction, disaster prompts opportunity for a more powerful resilience, and whether this familiarity of betterment following disaster carries into reality is not so simply scripted. Hurricane Sandy provided that reality for the New York Metropolitan coastline, and this work will progressively read into the early scripts of three distinct sites. Social trend was one of invulnerability An urban place that has the complex ability to provide effectively for its population ingrains a level of trust and comfort in that place’s strength during disaster. The underestimation of risk and misperception of hazard is a considerable issue in the nation’s attitude towards disaster. A report documenting global cities progress in climate adaptation planning by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) states that while the United States is currently aware and has a growing awareness of its overall vulnerability to disaster, it is very much further behind as a country than most other countries that have the same level of threat.28 America’s lack of preparedness is a real one, not alone imagined, and one questions if the sense of immunity felt in the area to such climatic events is derived from overfamiliarity with disaster. Even more poignant to this work is what such a perception of invulnerability affects in the determining of response to very real disasters. Upholding of a global image The disaster stretching along the New York Metropolitan coastline was of particular significance to America in the challenge it presented to its upholding a global image to the world. New York has been the preeminent city of the U.S. and for New York to suffer is an expression of weakness that would penetrate throughout the nation and its global audience.29 The disaster images from the event are powerful and through their media saturation lasting, but of national importance is that the images of the coastline before disaster struck remain the prevailing ones. The responses to this disaster from the moment it struck were to have important ramifications on a whole multitude of scales, beyond local alone.

Campanella, Resilient City, 76. Joann Carmin, Nikhil Nadkarni and Christopher Rhie, Progress and Challenges in Urban Climate Adaptation Planning: Results of a Global Survey. (Massachusetts: MIT. 2012). 29 Thomas Campanella, “Urban Resilience and the Recovery of New Orleans.” Journal of the American Planning Association, 72:2 (2006): 142 27 28

* Chapter 1.5

Urban Resilience The backdrop for the response of the New York Metropolitan coastline to natural disaster is laid out in the grounding this chapter offers in the distinctly American attitudes to disaster. Despite sharing a common backdrop, the urban sites along the Metropolitan coastline do not pursue a single common path of urban resilience against disasters. A disaster may lead to more exuberant growth and progress, equally what may follow is a return to that which existed before the event.30 The implication of this work is that both situations are expressions of urban resilience, if they ultimately address the primary concerns and interests of the community involved. What becomes more powerful than crediting or discrediting one form of resilience over another is to understand and comment on the attitudes that guide and determine that expression of urban resilience the following chapters aim to ultimately explore these attitudes by developing case studies around three particular sites along the coastline.

Campanella, Resilient City, 91.

CHAPTER 2 THE CASE STUDY SITES *

1 Seaside Heights, New Jersey 2 Battery Park City, Manhattan 3 The Rockaways, Queens 1 Figure 2

Case study sites’ locations

Seaside Heights, New Jersey Battery Park City, Manhattan The Rockaways, Queens

The case study sites have been chosen to be particularly emotive, to provoke further insight into the American attitudes towards disaster and resilience that this work has begun to explore. Chapter 1 formally outlined just how complex the co-ordination of post-disaster action is from the federal level downwards through to state and district levels – a heavily organized and consequently slow response. This chapter explores how that action is tinted by the primary interests of the community from the bottom up, drawing upon many of the attitudes and perceptions towards disaster raised in the previous chapter. Despite sharing a common national framework, local interests and capabilities heavily affect postdisaster action. The three sites are of very different characters, Battery Park City in Manhattan, Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore, and the Rockaways in Queens represent the wide response towards disaster that this work has become intent on exploring. The three cases researched all fall into the highest category FEMA flood zones. Across them all, the post-disaster actions must still be considered to remain in their earliest stages. The three sites are methodically introduced via their histories and characters, tying them to the last chapter in the attitudes they raise. They are then introduced once more in case study format, with the event of Hurricane Sandy applied, looking mainly to the physical effects on the built environment and the social effects on the community. What each community has first coordinated action towards – a certain type of building, a certain type of activity – informs the external observer of the prevailing interests of each site, beginning to define an identity for each. The long-term responses of each community cannot yet be known but ultimately extrapolated from these first observations of activity at each site. The published Community Development Block Grant Disaster-Recovery (CDBG D-R) Action Plans for New Jersey State and New York City provide collated data following the disaster, formalizing the issues raised in the case studies, whilst representing the focus of the regions through the distribution of funds. The plans must be considered as highly economically and politically charged documents. The correlation of the action plans with the appropriate case studies for the region confirms how prevailing interests at local level may sway post-disaster action management on the regional level.

The varied histories and characters to the sites * The Jersey Shore The Jersey Shore has developed its shorefront barrier island environment over time for the primary purpose of resort, stimulated by the arrival of railroads in the early 1900s and its accessibility to wealthy pleasure-seekers in New York and Philadelphia. The demand for leisure and recreation on these shore areas from the metropolitan areas are factors to which the communities owe both the ‘success’ of their initial development and subsequently owe their growing economic dependency within this sector. Wetlands and sand dunes have been transformed into resort and residential developments and the advance in population and wealth of the oceanfront municipalities along this chain of barrier islands has been far greater than the growth in wealth and population for the state as a whole.31 Seaside Heights forms a part of this narrow barrier peninsula, and is representative of the State’s coastal-wide growth trend. A shore-resort community of population 2,887 as of 2010 census, the municipality attracts as many as 65,000 to its 2-mile boardwalk in the height of the season. The political involvement in the State’s shorefront construction has undeniably shaped the urban character and attitude of its coastline – private development and local government interest have become intertwined in the coastline’s history and, in affording economic growth benefits to both parties, proposed state regulations to limit construction along vulnerable stretches of the shore have long been controlled and avoided in order to ensure real estate continued to deliver a premium. In 1972, Congress passed the Coastal Zone Management Act, encouraging states to devise management programs to promote better coastal land-use policies.32 This act was countered by New Jersey State in 1973 as the first Coastal Law contained a loophole barring the states authority to regulate developments of less than 25 units. Such legislature merely rechanneled development into a series of 24-unit developments along the coast. Local officials in New Jersey have some of the greatest financial power in the United States to create wealth through zoning, and that power is magnified at the coast. Where governors have passed orders giving authority to the state over further coastal development, the commissions involved have collapsed. Where loopholes in the 24-unit legislature have been closed, new compromises have been inserted – a provision written into the 1993 bill gave property owners an

U.S., Department of Commerce NOAA, New Jersey Shore Protection Master Plan, Vol. 2, Oct 2, 1981, (New Jersey: NOAA, 1981) 32 Chris Kirkham and John Rudolf. “Jersey Shore Development Failures Exposed by Hurricane Sandy” 31

absolute right to rebuild after major storm damage, which, to this day numbs the potential for the state to take a unified attitude towards resilience and limiting the state’s vulnerability to future storms, as millions of people remain close to the water’s edge at increasing risk.33 The Federal Emergency Management Agency insures more than $41.3 billion of coastal property in the state. The negative effects of New Jersey’s unique rights to rebuild is supported by data revealing the 509 repetitive loss properties in the state.34 In the rapid growth of the Jersey Shore’s identity, the state and communities ignored the risks and potential for loss, assuming an attitude that the federal government would blunt any economic costs that occur through federal relief following a damaging event.

New York City * Battery Park City With more than 520 miles of waterfront, New York City is one of the cities most susceptible to hurricanes and coastal storms in the country.35 Traditionally, New York City has expanded its boundaries by creating landfills - the land that now makes up Battery Park City was created during the Lower Manhattan Land-fill plan in 1965, by land reclamation on the Hudson River using soil and rocks excavated during the construction of the World Trade Centre and other construction projects, together with sand dredged from the Harbor off Staten Island. Resulting in a 92-acre planned community at the southwestern tip of Lower Manhattan, Battery Park City is one of Manhattan’s youngest neighborhoods, a fact reflected in its urban fabric which omits the walk-ups, brownstones or tenements that constitute much of the city’s typical urban morphology. Citywide financial hardship halted construction efforts for a two-year period beginning in 1977 and the title to the landfill was transferred from the city to the public-benefit corporation – Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) - created by the state. Under the 1989 agreement between the BPCA and the City of New York, $600 million was transferred by the BPCA to the city, continuing to contribute $200 million a year. The economic relationship between New York City and Battery Park City is a significantly powerful one affording benefits to both.

Chris Kirkham and John Rudolf. “Jersey Shore Development Failures Exposed by Hurricane Sandy” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Data Feeds: Hurricane Sandy Housing Assistance Data (New York & New Jersey)” National Flood Hazard Layer” http://www.fema.gov/data-feeds [Accessed 01 Mar 2013] 35 U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, 2013, 3. 33 34

Battery Park is bounded on the east by West Street, which separates the area from the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The Lower Manhattan area is the nation’s fourth-largest central business district, and of the 132 million square feet in Lower Manhattan, about 90 million is commercial.36 Battery Park City is primarily a high-income residential neighborhood towards the north and south, and central to the site are the many commercial buildings occupied by global business tenants. * The Rockaways The Rockaways developed into a popular summer resort for middle-class New Yorkers during the 19th century and its urban fabric of seaside bungalows and amusement parks was built upon this temporary transient population. Improved road train and airborne networks dissipated this population away from the city’s local resort, and Rockaway fell into neglect. A housing crisis in the 50’s drew rapid development towards the Rockaways and other shoreline locations on the outer boroughs of the city. Federal financing from the Housing Act of 1949 was put towards Oceanside tower housing developments and marked the era of the New York City housing policy of which political figures such as Robert Moses were hugely influential to such planning. It is the line of high-rise public housing near the shoreline that set the tone for the area – Moses’ aggressive approach to urban renewal.37 The New York City Welfare Department placed welfare families and those uprooted from the areas to be demolished in the former summer bungalows that were repurposed as year-round housing. The urban fabric of the Rockaways exists, through its political shaping, predominantly of one- and two-story homes of summer bungalow type and that of high-rise public housing units - types that are highlighted in the city’s action plans as forming a greater percentage of building types in the Inundation Area than their percentage within the city’s total housing stock. 38 The continued pressure on the city for low-income housing forced more towers despite the schemes having been judged a failure from moral and urbanplanning perspectives, as the areas where projects already existed became the only areas where further development was politically feasible.39 Most New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments were built between 1945 and 1965, and by the end of the 1970s the peninsula contained half the public

U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, 2013, 80. Jonathan Mahler, “How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york-citys-coastline-became-home-to-thepoor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [Accessed Jan 20, 2013] 38 Jonathan Mahler, “How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor” 39 Maria Ailova, Interview by Hayden White, Terreform ONE and Planetary ONE, Dec 16, 2012. 36 37

housing projects in Queens, though only containing 0.5% of the borough’s population. 40 The demographic of the area became one of extreme segregation from the city and mainly defined by the extreme poor. Isolated and distanced from the city, residents have relied on help arriving from the outside, an issue that prevailed during the storm and that the case study site explores. Density is concentrate in pockets of the Rockaway and has been associated with some of the city’s highest rates of unemployment. 41 The exposure of the most vulnerable to the waters of the Atlantic without the independence to protect themselves and without support from the city, has made the Rockaways a site of tension both before and after Hurricane Sandy.

40 41

Jonathan Mahler, “How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor” U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, 2013, 83.

The Disaster Characteristics A Collection of Maps, Images and Narratives *

Seaside Heights, New Jersey

Figure 3 Seaside Heights aerial image.

Figure 4 Destruction to Seaside Heightsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Casino Pier and collapsed Jet Star Rollercoaster. Figure 5 Sand forced inland in Seaside Heights and buildings dislodged from foundations.

The Culture of Building A resort shore community with extensive apartment development lining its beach, and structures built right up to the reach of mean high tide – the limit set in municipal code. Structures are mainly of a conventional light wood frame elevated on wooden piles. The principal urban feature is the boardwalk stretching 2 miles along the beach connecting the two main piers, Casino Pier and Funtown pier. The amusement-oriented boardwalk abuts and serves many small businesses, clubs and bars, a primary infrastructure of the community. The Disaster’s Damage Sections of both of Seaside Height’s piers were torn apart by the powerful storm surge causing many of the rides to collapse into the ocean and the boardwalk to be lifted from its piles. The force of the surge dislodged homes and structures. Huge volumes of sand were forced inland. The Effects on People’s Lives The boardwalk represents a lifeline for the community in both a social and economic sense. The community lost homes, businesses and belongings to Hurricane Sandy but most significant was the loss of potential for activity through the destruction of the boardwalk. Apparent through the media, in private personal accounts, and in statements of the state’s political leaders are an attitude of determination to recovering what was lost, recovery driven through nostalgia.

Figure 6, 7 and 8

Screenshots of Seaside Heightsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; boardwalk recovery, from live stream site EarthCam on March 22, 2013, April 9, 2013, and April 23, 2013

Action Case Study Seaside Heights’ boardwalk The recovery efforts of Seaside Heights have been well publicized alongside the community’s primary agenda to open for the summer season by 10th May 2013. The borough council borrowed $14.1 million in an emergency appropriation loan in order to pay immediate disaster related costs and to start work on prioritized projects such as the boardwalk, funds they hope to be reimbursed for by FEMA after the work is complete.42 Lance Brown, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, stated in an interview on 8 April 2013 that “the buildings and the tourist attractions lining the boardwalk that survived are being repaired and those that didn’t are being replaced… Seaside Heights is rebuilding very much in the same pattern and configuration as they were before the storm.”43 (Appendix 1) The borough released the boardwalk bid package in December 2012, specifying the boardwalk to be constructed with 20 feet long piles and outlining stronger anchorage of the boardwalk to those piles than existed before. The rebuilding of the boardwalk is being streamed via EarthCam, a live webcam network.44 (Figs. X, X and X) The live streaming of the boardwalk construction ensures that Seaside Heights is globally seen to be recovering, acting as a wider marketing strategy for the community and the upcoming summer season.

Kristi Funderburk, “Seaside Heights' new boardwalk advancing.” Asbury Park Press http://www.app.com/article/20130406/NJNEWS/304060036/Seaside-Heights-boardwalkconstruction [Accessed Apr 7, 2013]. 43 Lance Brown, interview by author. Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Apr 8, 2013. 44 EarthCam, “Seaside Heights Cam,” http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newjersey/seasideheights/ [Accessed between Mar 22, 2013 and Apr 23, 2013] 42

The Disaster Characteristics A Collection of Maps, Images and Narratives *

Battery Park City, Lower Manhattan

Figure 9 Lower Manhattan aerial image, Battery Park Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landfill site boundary outlined

Figure 10 Figure 11

Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel flooded, as seen from Battery Park City side. Goldman Sachsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; preparations to headquarters in Battery Park City prior to Hurricane Sandy.

The Culture of Building Battery Park’s urban fabric and character is one of robustness. The area has extreme economic resource in its community management and in the global corporations that reside there. Goldman Sachs, an investment banking firm, is a notable example that, upon opening its new 43-story headquarters in 2009, created and fulfilled its own brief for urban generation creating a ‘Goldman village’ of shops and restaurants around its headquarters on 200 West Street.45 The culture of building is one of bolstering the social and built landscape through whatever development and economic investment is necessary. The Disaster’s Damage The financial services firm survived the 14 foot storm surge and any damage to its services by sourcing 25,000 sandbags to pile around its entrances.46 Not all buildings were as extremely resourceful and many lost their mechanical services to flooding. Of those that managed to protect their mechanical systems, power remained on, whereas it was lost to all other parts of Lower Manhattan from 34th street downwards. The World Trade Centre network that serves Battery Park City and the area around the World Trade Centre site did not fail during the storm and continued to serve pockets of the area. The structural fabric of Battery Park was relatively untouched as the area had a designed resilience from its construction after the 1983 revised building codes. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel flooded accepting 90 million gallons of water that otherwise would have contributed to a further few feet of flooding of Lower Manhattan – the tunnel acted as a drain to the city.47 The Effects on People’s Lives Residents of Battery Park City were inconvenienced but not harmed. Similarly many businesses were temporarily halted but most global firms either had backup generators or were quickly able to source them, so disruption was minimal. The Brooklyn-Battery tunnel took two weeks to pump out and restore tunnel service. The community officials have used Hurricane Sandy as an opportunity to re-evaluate the areas preparedness.

Jessica Pressler, “Goldman has the Power” New York Magazine, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/11/goldman-has-the-power.html [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. 46 Ibid. 47 Brown, interview. 45

Activity Case Study Battery Park City Adaptation Policy

Figure 12 Illustration showing buildings with the same floor area ration (FAR 1.0) Response through policy change was rapid in Battery Park City. On January 22, Manhattan Community Board 1, which encompasses Battery Park City, published a report ‘Emergency Preparedness: Lessons Learned from Superstorm Sandy’ outlining necessary changes for the area to be better prepared for future emergencies. The focus of the report is on active policy changes to mitigate the loss of power and utilities from the mechanical system failures that occurred during the disaster. The Community Board immediately outlined zoning regulations that require building developers to install mechanical infrastructure on ‘flood zone-safe’ locations without incurring a loss of floor area ratio.48 Floor area ratios are used within zoning regulations as a limit to the intensity of the site being developed. (Fig. 12) A majority of buildings in the community district house their mechanical infrastructure in basements to maximize the aboveground floor area ratio given over to the primary function of the building.49 Mechanical infrastructure locations prior to Hurricane Sandy had been solely profit-driven and not guided through hazard mitigation concerns. The new zoning regulations allowing further aboveground floor area for mechanical infrastructure ensure that a developer continues to achieve maximum profitable area for the zoning regulations of the site whilst engaging in mitigation strategies against future flood damage.

U.S., New York City Community Board 1, Emergency Preparedness: Lessons Learned From Superstorm Sandy, Jan 22, 2013, (New York: City of New York, 2013), 4. 49 Ibid. 48

The Disaster Characteristics A Collection of Maps, Images and Narratives *

The Rockaways, Queens

Figure 13

Rockaway Peninsular aerial image.

Figure 14 Figure 15

Destruction debris at Rockaway Park Destruction and NYCHA buildings at Far Rockaway

The Culture of Building The urban fabric is predominantly a residential one – a mixture of one- and two story homes of summer bungalow type and that of reinforced concrete high-rise public housing projects of the 1950’s onwards. Both scales sit together along the oceanfront of the entire peninsular. Of the housing stock within Queens borough Inundation Area, approximately 79% was constructed prior to 1980.50 The rapid growth of the community far outstretched the infrastructure to support it. Transport networks and connections to the mainland are limited.51 The Disaster’s Damage As of November 13, the electrical systems of 29,000 homes, 22 percent of the housing stock on the peninsula, were in danger of being deemed beyond repair.52 By the end of November many of those homes had their power restored, but the return of basic amenities remained in doubt. Tens of thousands of boilers and hot water heaters had been destroyed. Mould had set in and many of the light wood frame structures had suffered structural damage. The cost of renovation, in many cases, would be greater than the value of the houses. The high-rise public housing projects suffered little structural damage, but the loss of power meant that many of the population who did not evacuate – often the most vulnerable groups - were trapped without the use of a working elevator. Rooftop water tanks relied on pumps to deliver water to the high-rise apartments and many did not connect to back up generators for weeks to return crucial services to the projects.53 Despite this, the city’s Building Department cleared many of the complexes for occupancy – inspectors focusing on structural issues. The Effects on People’s Lives Evacuation was hindered as entire families often reside within a few streets of each other in the Rockaways – a social feature of the area’s interiority – without a relative outside the evacuation zone with whom to stay, so many remained during the storm.54 The densely populated area relied on outside help during the critical days and extended period following the storm, the main help arrived from local volunteers rather than emergency agencies who were slow to reach and act in the area. Train connection to the mainland was cut due to extensive damage of the over line tracks and flooding of the subway system, limited transportation existed through bus service and the train connection to the city is still not running a full service. The media has documented the furthered sense of detachment and neglect that the community feels from the city’s recovery as a whole.

U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, 2013, 17. Maria Ailova, interview. 52 Michael Greenberg, “Occupy the Rockaways” The New York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jan/10/occupy-rockaways/?pagination=false [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. 53 Sheri Fink, “A Queens High Rise Where Fear, Death and Myth Collided” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/nyregion/at-queens-high-rise-fear-death-and-mythcollided.html?pagewanted=all [Accessed Jan 5, 2013]. 54 Deirdre Freerick, Interview by Author. Attourney for New York City Council, Apr 19, 2013. 50 51

Activity Case Study Failed assistance at the Rockaways

Figure 16

House at Rockaway Park in process of being raised above flood elevation level

The Rockaways housing stock showed a significant contrast in survival rate dependant on their date of construction on the peninsular in regards to the 1983 building code changes.55 Of those houses that did survive, New York City Council Attorney Deirdre Freerick (Appendix 2) explains that owners either have to raise their buildings above the new base flood elevation levels or face significantly higher insurance premiums.56 The population of the Rockaways is predominantly a low income one, with income support levels for the district resting at 35.3% of the population in 2011.57 Freerick explains that the “federal government is providing International Corporate Compliance funds alongside flood insurance, of about $35,000 to those whose homes that have been absorbed into the updated flood zone map”. The cost of lifting a house rests at $100,000 or more, so property owners currently have to find the outstanding funds in order to reduce their vulnerability to their high-risk environment. Acknowledging the financial difficulties of the population to find such funds, Freerick explains the state government is pursuing other ways to help people get money because of the impossibility of getting such a population of people to raise their home without financial assistance - “They don’t have a $100,000 sitting around… [Part of] the Mayors proposal is for the [Community Development Block Grant] funds to cover the costs for a pool of contractors to come in and provide certain services for those people…hoping that FEMA will fund it and then the city will administer it”. This proposal is not yet approved and so any current adaptation in the Rockaways regarding the raising of buildings is largely through private-funds alone.

Notes: Since 1983, New York City’s Building Code has contained flood-proofing requirements for buildings in FEMA-designated flood hazard areas. A key provision of these requirements is that new or substantially altered buildings must elevate their lowest finished floor or flood proof up to the ‘Base Flood Elevation’ indicated on the FEMA flood map. 56 Freerick, interview. 57 U.S. Department of Commerce, “State & County Census Data” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. 55

The Disaster Recovery Action Plans * In both New Jersey State and the City of New York, the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Plan’s quantify the level of damage from Hurricane Sandy and describe the plans to spend the funds allocated to each region. Submitted on January 29 2013 by New York City, and March 27 2013 by New Jersey State, the funds allocated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are to satisfy “unmet needs” – financial needs not satisfied by other public or private funding sources that reached the regions in the short-term. HUD expressly require 80% of funds to be allocated to the “most impacted and distressed” areas as determined by HUD. 58 Ocean County, into which Seaside Heights falls, is one of these counties. The plans offer an important insight into how, post-disaster, the individual communities that make up the character of a region can begin to affect the longer-term recovery process. The plans to divide the funds ultimately reflect the main interests and stakeholders within the communities most heavily affected, allowing their attitudes to filter up into the recovery action that is taken. Key figures for New Jersey

US$

Total CDBG-DR Funds to be allocated

5,400,000,000

Initial fund allocation

1,829,520,000

Commercial Property loss

382,000,000

Tourism marketing campaign

25,000,000

Business interruption losses

63,900,000

Tourism Industry contribution to Gross Domestic Product

438,000,000,000

Table 1 Select economic data from New Jersey CDBG-DR Action Plans

New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Action Plan 2013, 76. 58

* New Jersey State The introduction of New Jersey’s plans to spend the CDBG-DR funds speaks of Superstorm Sandy’s lasting impact on New Jersey’s business sector with small businesses particularly affected. Small businesses with five or fewer employees make up 98.4% of the State’s business community.59 Businesses in 113 of New Jersey’s 565 municipalities incurred significant losses in commercial property and business interruption losses.60 Preliminary assessment deemed a lack of comprehensive insurance and limited access to capital as the drivers of difficulties for these businesses alongside the economic injuries that resulted from temporary closures, unavailability of critical inputs and displaced customer bases. While most industries were impacted, it is the tourism industry that has been identified as particularly affected, the industry being the state’s third largest.61 The plan emphasizes economic recovery and revitalization as a central component of the state’s long-term recovery effort and the state proposes using part of the funds for a tourism marketing campaign to inform tourists that much of the Jersey Shore is open for business in 2013.62 The shore communities of Atlantic, Monmouth and Ocean Counties (the latter to which Seaside Heights belongs) are highlighted in the plans as the location of a substantial concentration of damage and are sites that show the breadth of the storm’s impact on the tourism industry. Based on FEMA ‘Individual Assistance Registrants’ to reflect the extent and concentration of damage to New Jersey’s building stock, Ocean County is identified as having the greatest concentrations of damage at a figure of 35%.63 The state plans recognize that these communities’ budgets rely on the annual tourism revenues, and, individually contributing to the most impacted communities, they have shaped the emphasis of the action plans.

New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Action Plan 2013, 3. 60 Ibid., 4-14. 61 Ibid., ii, 5. 62 Ibid., iii. 63 Ibid., 5. 59

Key figures for New York City

Data

Residents in the Inundation Area compared to NYC population Percentage of Elderly (age 65 and over) population within the Inundation Area

10.3%

Percentage of people with disabilities within the Inundation Area

10.6% (1% higher than overall population)

NYCHA buildings affected

400 (60 in the Rockaways)

NYCHA residents affected

80,000 (10,100 in the Rockaways)

14.5% (2% higher than overall population)

Table 2 Select social data from NYC CDBG-DR Action Plan

Comparison between revised Advisory Base Flood Elevation maps and 1983 Flood Insurance Rate Maps Percentage increase in jobs included in revised ABFE maps compared to 1983 FIRMs Percentage increase in buildings included in revised ABFE maps compared to 1983 FIRMs Percentage increase in floor area included in revised ABFE maps compared to 1983 FIRMs

Percentage increase

79%

97%

57%

Table 3 Comparative Data between FEMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shift in flood maps from NYC CDBG-DR Action Plan

* New York City

The New York City CDBG-DR plans offer detailed data into the demographic range impacted by Hurricane Sandy within each of the five boroughs in comparison with the borough’s overall demographic and that of the city’s. Further outlined is a disparity between the two figures in regards to the elderly and those with disabilities – groups that constitute a few percentage points more in the inundation area compared to the regions demographic. This apparent density of vulnerable groups in the Inundation Area was the attention of one of the case study sites – the Rockaways in south Queens, which is the site of 60 New York City Housing Authority public housing units that the CDBG-DR action plan finds cause to address. In the emergency period, the city first supplied generators meeting demand in the interest of life and safety, then placing highest priority for NYCHA building systems restoration, which was proved to be an extended recovery period in the Rockaways. The inundation and significant damage of systems was also highlighted in the action plans in Lower Manhattan affecting nearly 35% of the office space, 30% of retail businesses, and 20% of the residential units.64 Implementing basic resiliency and mitigation strategies regarding building systems is one of the focal aims of the action plan, a city focus that correlates with the primary interests of the Battery Park City action case study. All action in the plan is introduced alongside the revised preliminary FEMA Advisory Base Flood Elevation (ABFE) Maps that outdate the FEMA flood zones, responding to the 1983 Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMSs) that guided the city prior to the storm. The shift in zones has nearly doubled the number of NYC buildings located in the 100-year floodplain, highlighting a much greater area of vulnerability than the city had previously acknowledged.65

U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, 2013, 81. 65 Ibid., 45. 64

CHAPTER 3 ANALYTICAL OVERVIEW * The work focused in on a single nation’s frameworks and systems for disaster, to then spread out and document the range of results that can be traced through three sites of a shared coastline. Through external observation, the work acknowledges the powerful influence each site’s human socio-economic and political identities have had in the interaction of their urban situation with Hurricane Sandy. This chapter looks to comment on how each sites’ identity, expressed through the actions observed before and after the disaster, affects the attitude and chosen path of resilience of each site. * Chapter 3.1

Cultural and institutional attitudes towards disaster and resilience expressed through post-disaster actions What the case study sites offer in their initial post-disaster recovery states is an exposure of the prevailing attitudes of the community that has been disturbed. At this point we are able to posit questions about the state that each community wishes to maintain or regain – its idealized goal of ‘recovery’. The coastline, so varied in its character, ensures that the goal of recovery and strife towards ‘resilience’ in each part of it is not a common one. Each site’s characters and motives were vulnerable to Hurricane Sandy to different degrees and the speed of recovery of the supporting urban fabric behind those is also pursued, strengthened or resisted to different degrees. The character of Seaside Heights is centered on tourism and the ‘application’ of an urban fabric ‘upon’ the ocean – that of boardwalk, shorefront amenities and summer rental properties. The community relies on a single economic sector for its livelihood, and the fabric that supported this sector was most devastated during Hurricane Sandy. Seaside Heights’ history is routed in its existence as a boardwalk community; it is where its identity, and the image that constitutes it, is most compounding. The survival of the community was considered to be dependent on the replacement of the urban fabric that constituted this image, and the success of its recovery was considered through the immediacy of this replacement. Political leadership has guided Seaside Heights after disaster towards these effects. The

business motivated speed and location of redevelopment initiates concerns through its neglected inclusion of rational planning efforts, limiting its opportunity for adaptation after the disaster.66 Lance Brown, FAIA, says that “any development now, before reports that have been commissioned by New York City and the Army Corps of Engineers have been distributed will remain and it is only the remaining recovery that might benefit…and gain a resilience that is anticipatory of the next storm.”67 Any policies to be developed to enable quicker recovery if a similar hazard should once again interact with the community will minimally filter into the urban fabric until the next disaster. Apparent is a community that should either retreat or integrate change into its built (and socio-economic) fabric, but whose attitude is resistance to either.

In the case of the Rockaways, the site has been characterized by a density of groups dependent on the city’s assistance, groups made even more vulnerable and more dependent after Hurricane Sandy. A feeling of abandonment and marginalization exists in the population.68 Poorly planned community infrastructure, and the vulnerability of the two main types of housing stock add greatly to the vulnerabilities of the population. The bungalow typology had no resistance to the force of the storm surge, and the high-rise typology had systems failures from the flooding. The Rockaways was at risk through its social context, urban fabric and the fragility of its coastline. The site was urbanized to its condition today not through meaningful development of the land, but rather through a history of marginalization and political mistakes, belonging to a wider issue of land use. The development of the low-lying land was of political motive and powers beyond those of the area. The sites’ identity remains loosely defined, if anything, by its features of political mistakes more so than the growth of a community with distinct interests. Case studies suggest the emergency period was extended at this site far more than others, and many crucial services remain in their unrecovered state 6 months on from the disaster. The Rockaways presents a community that should be relocated from the barrier lowlands – to minimize the risks to a vulnerable population made more vulnerable by the hazard of their location. Yet the politically charged history of the site makes such post-disaster action – that of uprooting an already ill-treated community – an easily avoided one due to the inevitable reprimands to political image and logistical struggle. America looks upon the recent precedent of New Orleans and its action after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, where the government

Tigran Hass, Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2012), 22. 67 Brown, interview. 68 Freerick, interview. 66

didn’t allow people to return to their homes, as a negative reference provoking fear and resistance towards any action that might induce the same political and social devastation as New Orleans felt.69

Battery Park City, structurally undamaged by Hurricane Sandy through the youth and robustness of its built fabric, recovered the majority of the area’s mechanical systems that were affected during the storm within two weeks, and its attitude has passed from recovery to that of policies for adaptation. The sites development after the city had introduced storm surge mitigation regulations into its 1983 building codes ensured all buildings on the site have been constructed with consideration towards such a hazard. Integration of further building codes and an improved system of protection of the public by the city to such events is currently being integrated into the urban fabric of the area in advance of the next storm.70 The community board has proven its organizational resources and capabilities, publishing a report introducing the further regulations the area will be enforcing. The sites identity allows for such self-directed activity, its prime real-estate location in Lower Manhattan ensuring the economic capability of the parties involved in such a shift and ensuring the interest in such a shift towards safer more equitable construction. The site was developed through land reclamation on the Hudson River, its very existence an engineered feat and one that extends into its identity and urban fabric. Global firms have located and have extreme economic agility in further directing the areas shape and lasting image that they bought into. * Chapter 3.2

Critique to the American Disaster Attitudes, Frameworks, Planning Systems and Codes Development in flood zones continues steadily over time. The NFIP has proven unable to steer urban growth to lower-risk areas in NYC, or the US in general. 71 A critique emerges through America’s tendency as a nation to address issues only when it makes economic sense to do so. The economic incentive to continue to develop low-lying lands in profitable areas has been far stronger than the economic (and moral) pressures of recovery following disasters. As disasters become more frequent, attributed both to the incessant development of vulnerable areas and the effects of climate change, a paradigm shift may be

Steinberg and Shields, What is a City. U.S., New York City Community Board 1, Emergency Preparedness: Lessons Learned 71 Aerts et al., Climate Adaption, 181. 69 70

forced in time, with a more coherent attitude towards disaster mitigation and resilience. American society is so heavily rooted in its support of private venture – running on the premise that when business thrives, society thrives – that the current attitudes towards coastal development are unsurprising; that of supporting private interests and growth in areas of high risk at the expense of the public should disaster occur. The model of private profit/public debt exists through all sectors of American society. A report by MIT states that in general U.S. cities lag behind other cities around the world in their progress in urban climate adaption planning.72 Lance Brown, FAIA, references this report saying “while the U.S. is currently aware of its overall vulnerability to disaster, it is very much further behind as a country than most other countries that have the same level of threat”.73 (Appendix 1) Progress in the field is hindered by the conflicting expressions of national intent apparent in the American frameworks for disaster – where federal policies and efforts to manage development in hazardous areas exist, they are often undercut in a postdisaster environment by federal assistance funding activities that are inconsistent with the wider mitigation strategy.74 Such a critique can be highlighted through current post-disaster frameworks such as FEMA’s insurance claim policies that only cover recovery of the building to the exact same built specification as prior to the disaster. Funds cannot be used for betterment or mitigation, simply replacement. Until a paradigm shift occurs, difficulties in implementing policies and forcing changes to mitigate disasters in high hazard areas will prevail. A national challenge identified is with the responsibility for setting and implementing reconstruction policies resting at the local political level.75 Conditioned by local pressures, many of which are political, the priority of future hazard consideration often falls below commitment to the more dominant local interests. As the work has begun to express, the pressures to return a community to its pre-disaster state as quickly as possible are powerful ones, and many of the most important opportunities for reducing future hazard vulnerability are lost in the early recovery process. Despite such challenges, several years of catastrophic events has indeed focused attention in the U.S. on hazards and actively directed legislation. Prior to Hurricane Sandy, FEMA was remapping areas of the New Jersey and New York coastlines to update the Flood Insurance Rate Maps that had been initially developed over 25 years ago inevitably underestimating the extent of a current

Christopher Rhie, Progress and Challenges in Urban Climate Adaptation Planning: Results of a Global Survey. (Massachusetts: MIT. 2012). 73 Brown, interview. 74 U.S., NOAA, Year of the Ocean : Mitigating the impacts of coastal hazards, (1998). [Online] http://www.yoto98.noaa.gov/yoto/meeting/hazard_316.html [Accessed 27 Mar 2013] 75 Ibid. 72

100-year storm. Hurricane Sandy prompted FEMA to rapidly provide initial near-term Advisory Base Flood Elevations - a recommended elevation of the lowest floor - to support reconstruction efforts before updated FIRMs are finalized. Updated FIRMs will be mandated for new construction after their effect, but homes that sustained less than 50 percent damage in a disaster will retain the rights to rebuild as they were according to state and federal law. This filtered approach to enforcing adaptation provokes criticism in its hesitancy to make difficult firm decisions, but also presents an interesting case for the evolution of the building stock by natural selection. Those buildings that fared best endure, the disaster frameworks allowing for their being repaired, whilst those types deemed to be ‘substantially damaged’ or totally destroyed are lost from the urban fabric. An anticipatory attitude to disaster or one rapidly informed by a disaster, affecting adaptation in a buildings fabric or an area’s character, can be most often attributed to cases of private-led initiative rather than through a greater state attitude or federal persuasion. Battery Park City’s existence under a New York State public-benefit corporation, BPCA, affords it some advantageous possibilities, in its financial capabilities and powers that enhance its ability to rapidly react and adapt after Hurricane Sandy.76 Prompt adoption of updated zoning regulations exhibits this power. The City of New York has initiated a study under the title Special Initiative for Response and Rebuilding (SIRR) which Lance Brown, FAIA, refers to saying “the cities in-depth response with 30 people working full time with hundreds of people being contacted, housing organisations being interviewed … coming out with plans and proposals that [will be] potentially, legally, instituted” due to be released on the 31st May. Furthermore the Army Corps of Engineers [are studying] the effects of sea level rise on the Hudson River valley and New York harbour. The release of these studies will be pivotal as Brown comments “until such studies as those are completed not very much new legislation is going to be enacted.”77 (Appendix 1) New York City’s power, capability and attitude towards enacting change and adaptation must be reassessed following the release of these studies, but evidence of a heightened interest exists.

Notes: Public-benefit corporations, through state liaison, may borrow money and issue debt, allowing the areas they control greater economic capability. 77 Brown, interview. 76

* Chapter 3.3

Positive advancements in Metropolitan Coastline Hunters Point South, Long Island City, Queens

Figure 17

Aerial image showing Lower Manhattan and Long Island City. Hunters Point South Site highlighted.

Hunters Point South, Long Island City, Queens

One further case study situated in New York City, separate to the sites already discussed, offers an attitude the Metropolitan Coastline might replicate were a paradigm shift to occur in disaster planning. Originally envisioned as the athletes’ village for NYC’s 2012 Olympics bid, it is a development of atypical circumstance and, discussed alongside the growing narrative this work explores, of a power greater than normal required to affect an active attitude towards disaster in America. A mixed-use, middle-income development of 5000 housing units, the highprofile waterfront site employed a series of flood mitigation efforts prior to Hurricane Sandy. The whole development was built up 10 feet above the flood plain, the building frontage of a concrete base designed to act as a floodwall.78 Brown points out the unique and unusual significance of the projects construction without basements.79 The storm hit prior to the project’s groundbreaking ceremony, held on 4 March, at which New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined additional mitigation strategies to be adopted; the raising of the mechanical equipment to the second floor or higher, with emergency generators kept on the roof, and all exterior doors in the floodplain designed to receive floodgates. An early expression of a more informed attitude towards coastal hazard, the case study’s significance rests in its implications that such attitudes to resilience are the territory of the private-led initiative.

Annie Karni, “In the Boroughs, Queens: Above the flooded plain Preventive measures help new high-rises survive superstorm.” Crains New York, http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20121125/REAL_ESTATE/311259973 [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. 79 Brown, interview. 78

CONCLUSION * This work has looked to how the New York Metropolitan region has laid its urban fabrics next to water, developing a coastline that, in parallel, can house vulnerable populations, drive the global economy, and fulfill the transient desires of pleasure seekers. Diverse in the activities it hosts, the coastline also expresses extreme variance in its economic capability - that of poverty alongside wealth gained through capitalism and tourism. The complexity of identities that line the New York Metropolitan coastline offer an opportunity for reflection and insight when a disaster interacts with them all, unbiased to their individual features. Each case study has introduced sites of different characters, fabrics, and vulnerabilities to disaster. Each site has offered a different definition for its own recovery and attitude towards resilience. The work has aimed to promote a more nuanced understanding of the depths to a site’s response and resilience after a disaster. Common throughout all case study sites was the sense of recovery and rebuilding as a complex and highly charged act. Political, economic and social storylines all contribute to both positive and negative effect on the chosen resilience of a community, their urban fabrics and their post-disaster activities; powerfully influencing factors that have been read on the scales of the community, state and national level. Recognized within the composition of parts was the influence of American regulatory frameworks, emergency agencies, and the insurance industry that provided a base to a whole culture of disaster. Additional layers of national perception and attitude towards hazards and risks were applied. A tone throughout is the inability to escape the fact that the disaster met a coastline that hosted an intensely economy-driven society - an American disaster. In studying three sites, along the Metropolitan Coastline, the work arrived at a key question that becomes wholly relevant to the larger analysis into recovery and resilience. What identity is being defended at each site? ‘Identity’ may be considered as the lasting visual descriptor of a place, the images by which a place is known and thought of, but also as the compounding storylines and prevailing interests that constitute a place. Post-disaster activity appears most prompt when those with an overarching power are intent on reaffirming or reinforcing the pre-disaster identity.

Figure 18

Seaside Heights – a typical postcard image

At Seaside Heights, the political powers on the state and local level were intent on reaffirming the community’s identity within the tourism sector. Action to bolster this economic sector matched with the majority stakeholder interests of the site. Seaside Heights set its definition of recovery as that of a thin veneer to support its premise as a resort community. The site and the identity it defends work on a different timescale to that of the other case study sites; one of an approaching summer season and of the immediate impressions of a pleasure seeker. The post-disaster activity reflected this skewed time scale. The tourist, uninterested in the lasting resilience of the area but in the immediate experience of it, led the extent of the community’s and state’s interest. The study into the post-disaster action revealed fleeting engagement towards resilience, with token effort towards structural improvements of the boardwalk. For the community, primary resilience is found in the image of Seaside Heights, more so than a physical resilience that might force undesired change upon that primary one. The state particularly supported such nostalgic attitudes towards adaptation - State Governor Chris Christie, in his public addresses prior to the release of the State’s CDBG-DR Action Plans focused on the emotional significance of what has been lost, referencing his childhood along the Jersey Shore and his desire to bring it back for future generations.80 This work has introduced the New Jersey coastline as one heavily influenced throughout its history by state policy-makers, and posits that Hurricane Sandy’s legacy will continue to be heavily politically influenced with the growth of a more active attitude to coastal resilience restricted through the rigid preservation of the coast’s lasting identity.

Chris Kirkham and John Rudolf. “Jersey Shore Development Failures Exposed by Hurricane Sandy” 80

Figure 19

Battery Park City â&#x20AC;&#x201C; New York Magazines cover image, November 3 Issue

A lasting image of the disaster in New York City is Iwan Baan’s aerial shot (Fig. 19), where Battery Park City retains pockets of light whilst the rest of Lower Manhattan from 34th street downwards does not. The strength of identity that this image projects to the world is significant; of resilience through resource, a resource of limitless ‘power’ in the political, economic and social sense. New York City’s global identity, its repeatedly imagined storylines of betterment after calamity, predetermined that Battery Park City would exhume the city’s positive attitude towards recovery and resilience after a disaster, one whose own narrative could match the imagined. The urban fabric was already structurally enduring, and the disaster was one of lost comfort rather than lost lives. Built after 1983 codes, all structures had a level of resilience to the hazard risk that had been defined at this time. Gaps in that largely pre-existing endurance appeared when the interests of maximizing economic capital did not correlate with mitigation strategies for the building’s services. Real estate value drives the area - it is because of this value that the Battery Park City’s resilience fell short during disaster, and it is upon this enduring value that new adaptation policies are supported after disaster. The ability and speed with which the city realigned the two interests of safeguarding real estate value with mitigating future disaster effects is a reflection on the importance of a clear directive after disaster.

Figure 20

The Rockaways â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no lasting pre- or post-disaster image to reference

Hurricane Sandy left the Rockaways without a heroic image or nostalgic narrative that other parts of the coastline could claim, and without clear directive towards a post-disaster action. What the Rockaways is has always been enforced upon it by outside pressures. The work describes the relationship of distance yet reliance that the Rockaways share with the city, and the site provokes reflection on a bigger issue of land use and planning in America. The Rockaways’ identity is of interiority – many people didn’t have a place to go during the storm because all they knew was within the Rockaways.81 It had no straightforward identity to outwardly express before the disaster, as could be so strongly expressed in the other two case study sites. Therefore, the sites challenge is not merely in reaffirming or reinforcing the pre-disaster identity, but of supporting an identity in the first place. This work posits through comparison between all case studies that this inability to set a definition of ‘recovery’ falters recovery. Also emphasized, through an absence at this site, is the criticality of private-led initiative in the New York Metropolitan coastline’s recovery. The disaster exposed many of the flaws to the site requiring repair, the majority existing long before Hurricane Sandy, but the site is without the private capability, community resource or leadership to initiate a recovery.

Of the three case studies, it is the sites with the strongest pre-disaster identity that have proven most rapid in their post-disaster actions to reaffirm and strengthen that urban identity. A single coastline in all of its urban fabrics alludes to a common importance of an urban place’s strength of identity, and the powers that come with it, in order to trigger its post-disaster action. Hurricane Sandy hit the New York Metropolitan region on October 29th 2012. Since that date little has been published on the recovery of the coastline in all its parts, whereas the immediate disaster storyline was proliferated through the media in the days and weeks following. The fixation with the dramatic and the current, over that of the slow struggle of reality, is one to be overcome if an attitude to resilience is to become a part of our cities. All too easily moving on to the next narrative of disaster to engage with, the significant purpose of this work is to promote a more nuanced and enduring attitude towards the resilience of cities.

Freerick, interview.

REFERENCES Aerts, Jeroen., Botzen, Wouter., Bowman, Malcolm., Ward, Philip. and Dircke, Piet. Climate Adaption and Flood Risk in Coastal Cities, Oxon: Earthscan, 2012. Brown, Lance J. and Azaroff, Illya. “Sandy’s Watery Wake-up Call,” Oculus, A publication of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter Vol 75, Issue 1 (2013): 23-5 Ailova, Maria. Interview by Hayden White, Terreform ONE and Planetary ONE, Dec 16, 2012. Brown, Lance. Interview by author. Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Apr 8, 2013. Burby, R., Beatley, T., Berke, P., Deyle, R., French, S., Godschalk, D., Kaiser, E., Kartez, J., May, P., Olshansky, R., Paterson, R. and Platt, R. “Unleashing the power of planning to create disaster-resistant communities.” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol 65, Issue 3 (1999): 247–258. Burton, Ian., Kates, Robert. and White, Gilbert. The Environment as Hazard, New York: The Guilford Press, 1993. Campanella, Thomas J. and Vale, Lawrence J. The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Campanella, Thomas. “Urban Resilience and the Recovery of New Orleans.” Journal of the American Planning Association, 72:2 (2006): 141-146. Carmin, Joann., Nadkarni, Nikhil. and Rhie, Christopher. Progress and Challenges in Urban Climate Adaptation Planning: Results of a Global Survey. Massachusetts: MIT. 2012. Colten, C., Kates, R. and Laska, S. Community Resilience- Lessons from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, Columbia: CARRI, 2011. Cutter, Susan., Barnes, Lindsey., Berry, Melissa., Burton, Christopher., Evans., Elijah., Tate, Eric., Webb, Jenifer. Community and Regional Resilience: Perspectives from Hazards, Disasters, and Emergency Management, Columbia: CARRI, 2008. Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998. EarthCam, “Seaside Heights Cam,” http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newjersey/seasideheights/ [Accessed between Mar 22, 2013 and Apr 23, 2013] Fink, Sheri. “A Queens High Rise Where Fear, Death and Myth Collided” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/nyregion/at-queenshigh-rise-fear-death-and-myth-collided.html?pagewanted=all [Accessed Jan 5, 2013].

Freerick, Deirdre. Interview by Author. Attourney for New York City Council, Apr 19, 2013. Greenberg, Michael. “Occupy the Rockaways” The New York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jan/10/occupyrockaways/?pagination=false [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. Hass, Tigran. Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. 2012. Karni, Annie., “In the Boroughs, Queens: Above the flooded plain Preventive measures help new high-rises survive superstorm.” Crains New York, http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20121125/REAL_ESTATE/31125997 3 [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. Kirkham, Chris. and Rudolf, John. “Jersey Shore Development Failures Exposed by Hurricane Sandy” The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/jersey-shoredevelopment_n_2267557.html#slide=more268414 [Accessed Jan 20, 2013] Mahler, Jonathan. “How the Coastline Became a Place to Put the Poor.” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-newyork-citys-coastline-became-home-to-the-poor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [Accessed Jan 20, 2013] Main, C., Ward, S. Population at Risk from Natural Hazards, Maryland: NOAA, 1998. Pressler, Jessica. “Goldman has the Power” New York Magazine, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/11/goldman-has-the-power.html [Accessed Feb 20, 2013]. Rhie, Christopher. Progress and Challenges in Urban Climate Adaptation Planning: Results of a Global Survey. Massachusetts: MIT. 2012. Steinberg, Philip. and Shields, Rob. What is a City? : Rethinking the urban after Hurricane Katrina, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2008. The Drowning City, BBC Radio 4 radio broadcast. Feb 18, 2013. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Data Feeds: Hurricane Sandy Housing Assistance Data (New York & New Jersey)” National Flood Hazard Layer” http://www.fema.gov/data-feeds [Accessed 01 Mar 2013] U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. “National Hurricane Protection Scheme.” http://www.fema.gov/pdf/plan/prevent/nhp/nhp_faqs.pdf [Accessed 01 Mar 2013] U.S. Department of Commerce, “State & County Census Data” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html [Accessed Feb 20, 2013].

U.S., Department of Commerce NOAA, New Jersey Shore Protection Master Plan, Vol. 2, Oct 2, 1981, New Jersey: NOAA, 1981. U.S., New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Action Plan, Mar 27, 2013, Trenton: Department of Community Affairs, 2013. U.S., New York City Community Board 1, Emergency Preparedness: Lessons Learned From Superstorm Sandy, Jan 22, 2013, New York: City of New York, 2013. U.S., New York City, Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery Partial Action Plan A, Jan 29, 2013, New York: The City of New York, 2013. U.S., NOAA, Year of the Ocean : Mitigating the impacts of coastal hazards, (1998). [Online] http://www.yoto98.noaa.gov/yoto/meeting/hazard_316.html [Accessed 27 Mar 2013]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1 2 3 4 5 6, 7, 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Produced by the Author, (2013) Aerial image– use of Flash Earth, http://www.flashearth.com/ Produced by the Author, (2013) Location Graphic Produced by the Author (2013) Aerial image – use of Flash Earth, http://www.flashearth.com/ Olsen, Mark (2012) Seaside Heights, U.S. Department of Defense Tama, Mario (2012) Seaside Heights, Getty Images EarthCam (2013) Screenshots of Seaside Heights’ boardwalk recovery, http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newjersey/seasideheights/ Produced by the Author (2013) Aerial image - use of Flash Earth, http://www.flashearth.com/ Lanzano, Louis (2012) Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel flooded AP Blue, Victor J. (2012) Manhattan Goldman Sachs Bloomberg http//www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-04/the-importance-ofdisaster-plans [Accessed 20 Feb] NYC Zoning Handbook (n.d.) FAR illustration tenant.net Produced by the Author (2013) Aerial image - use of Flash Earth, http://www.flashearth.com/, Author’s own photograph (2012) The Rockaways Author’s own photograph (2012) The Rockaways Author’s own photograph (2012) The Rockaways Produced by the Author – Aerial image - use of Flash Earth, http://www.flashearth.com/, [Accessed 20 Feb, 2012] Weaver, Andrea (n.d) Postcard of Seaside Heights, www.gogobot.com seaside-heights-nj.jpg Baan, Iwan (2012) New York Magazines cover image, November 3 Issue Delmundo, Anthony (2012) New York Daily News,

APPENDIX 1

Transcript Interview with Lance Jay Brown of AIA NY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Chapter On 08 April 2013 by Catherine Yarwood CY: [Introducing the 3 sites that the work focuses on] …Battery Park City and this site represents one that is more economically capable to put together mitigation plans or recover in ways that others aren’t. L: The only one which stands out in terms of damage and recovery is Battery Park City which I think one could say was lightly touched in comparison, so had less to do to with being reconstituted compared to the other two sites. So if it was a matter of social economics, I am wondering whether or not if it would more a matter of looking at downtown Lower Manhattan in the commercial district where the office buildings were seriously affected and they have to be reconstituted to get the economy of that district, and to some extent the economy of this country, working again. Must the three areas be residential? CY: Not particularly, to me Battery Park City offered something different because it was developed mainly after the building codes of 1983, which consider storm surge, were implemented, so I wonder whether that would be an argument suggesting that the building codes had assisted and helped to protect the area. L: It’s a good reason to stay with it. My recollection was that one of the big issues in Manhattan, south of 34th street where all the lights went out was that Battery Park City stayed open with the lights on because its electricity was connected to the World Financial Centre power grid through, I think the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, meaning it was the only area that still had power and that power would then allow everything that you wanted to keep operating, including pumps, elevators and general lighting which made the whole thing more resilient. That is probably as good a reason as any to keep it. The other thing is that I guess there was a reference to the fact that if the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel had not flooded as it had, all that water would have been forced into Lower Manhattan and maybe areas that weren’t affected would have been affected. I think that is probably a big piece, because if you are familiar with the Japanese situation where they have these large things called Gcans which gather up flood waters as they move through the city and then pump them out later, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel was our G-can. CY: OK I understand that obviously that was not the Tunnel’s purpose or intention but it performed that way. L: Yes but it performed that way and its a double edged sword, nobody wanted to see that tunnel flooded, repairing it cost a lot of money but if it had caused the waters to be up another foot and go up into the Lower Manhattan neighbourhoods, another 200 feet then whose to say where the money would have ended up. CY: Another thing that I want to talk to you about is from being in New York when it all happened, I picked up on the sense that the city was shocked by what had happened and maybe what existed was a cultural sense of invulnerability. Do you think this is something that is real or something that I should be commenting on. L: Oh yes, I think its very real, very real. I wrote a piece about that, let me find it for you. CY: Do you think its a national trend or just something that a big global city like New York was feeling. L: No, no I am not sure if its a sense of vulnerability or invulnerability, I thinks its a matter, and again I’ll send you this little piece which has a reference to a study done by MIT that basically says “that while United States is aware, currently aware has growing awareness of its overall vulnerability to disaster, that it is very much further behind as a country than most other countries that have the same level of threat”. I mean that is just their report and it has some detail in it so it can be referred to. I referred to it in a piece I wrote. It wasn’t just an informal opinion but this is something that they have researched. CY: Do you know the activity now at Seaside Heights? Or the other two sites? L: I havn’t been to Rockaways recently and I haven’t been to Seaside Heights but from what I have read and the pictures I have seen, which may not be much more than you have seen, is that Seaside Heights is rebuilding very much in the same, what shall we call it, pattern and configuration, as they were before the storm. The major change that seems to be taking place at Seaside Heights is that they are replacing around the shallow boardwalk piles with very deep piles and anchoring their boardwalk to those piles and in a much stronger way than they had in the past. If the images of Seaside Heights are of its boardwalk somehow lifted, plucked out of the ground, you know that pilings have been driven over not so deep so it wasn’t possible for a surge to come on up underneath the boardwalk

and yank it out – you know like pulling teeth, so what they have done is they have made a deeper set of piles and they have connected the boardwalk more powerfully to it in the hope, I guess, that a surge would come by and go over it instead of ripping it up. That said, then all the acruitriments, the buildings and the tourist attractions that were lining the boardwalk, those that survived were being repaired and those that didn’t are being replaced with the hope that, come the beginning of the tourist season, they will be able to be back in business. Longer than that is still a question, this is their response what they are planning to do. I was looking at a report on the Rockaways this morning, dealing with the boardwalks there and I know I went to a presentation by a guy who was in charge of this not so long ago. Maybe you were there when this guy Romero talk about the boardwalks being rebuilt or had you left. He lay out a programme where the Department of Parks was going to rebuild all the boardwalks and everything was going to be open for business, I believe, on the 1st May. He talked about an enormous amount of energy being poured out by the people working in the Parks Department and how many drawings, a thousand drawings, had been cleared in the last six or eight that he was reporting about so that things could go to bid and get rebuilt. The report this morning didn’t say that they were on schedule or behind schedule but it did say that sections of the boardwalk would be up and running and there would be kind of “pods” spaced periodically with boardwalk services that would be up and running. So you would have those stretches that had those pods in place on either some existing or some reconstituted boardwalk and they were still hoping to meet that schedule. On the 21st April we will see what an update from him is at that time. L: But that is hope for the Rockaways, what do they say they have, 2.6 million people/visitors – I forget what the figures are you can find them out – but that is still hope. So the Seaside is trying to get their boardwalk together and Rockaways is trying to get their boardwalk together. I haven’t heard anything recent. Not that there is nothing to hear but I haven’t heard anything of what’s exactly happening with the low income housing, the New York City Housing Authority housing other than I expect its mostly back up and running with elevators, motors and boilers being replaced. It doesn’t mean that it has been rebuilt or retrofitted... as yet, against another storm. I don’t think it has been. I think it is operating but nor do I have a sense of whether or not in New York the boardwalk is going to be anymore adapted to potential next storms than it was to the past. All I know is that its being replaced. I didn’t get any discussion about its replacement yet or the materials. What was in wood before will now be in concrete or plastic, things that are more sustainable and sensitive but I don’t know, I can’t image the construction is going to be modified so that its more resilient but I don’t know that the configuration of the shoreline in terms of the construction of dunes or the height and configuration of the boardwalk is going to be any different than it was before. What I do know is that on the Crooken waterfront there is the Domino Sugar Factory. So the Domino Sugar Factory the last proposal for it was done by the office of Rafael Vinoly had a project that was for 50 feet from the East River. The current, new project that is being done by Shop Architects is 150 feet from the water, so we could say that there has been a 100-foot retreat added to the plan. Now I know that heard the Deputy Mayor saying that New York City will not retreat from the waterfront and it will continue to develop the waterfront. He probably should have said that it won’t retreat in any significant way but this prime object obviously moved further back and in doing so its plan in square footage went a little higher so it didn’t reduce. CY: But this setback was the initiative taken by the new developers and architects, it wasn’t anything the City required. L: No. They did a couple of other things as well, they made streets that sloped down from the upland towards the water and what had previously been a deck became a retaining wall with the idea that the water that jumped that retaining wall and went to the uplands would then be trapped there so they did a thing seeing where the water goes up and then drains back out on a slope. They are taking an initiative on their property to make it more resilient. The City, and this is for better or worse, in terms of pure schedules on this Stephpinski –he’s quite cute with this, he says “The City is going to release a report, a big study, on May 31 The title of the SIRR which is the Special Initiative for Response and Rebuilding, I believe, for the City of New York. There may be an outline of that available on the web. That’s the cities in depth response 30 people working full time with hundreds of people being contacted, housing organisations being interviewed but I also know that the City has not so secretly but with the information available hired 5 significant firms - some big corporate ones and some smaller ones – assigned them each an area, Statten Island, Rockaways and other places and they will be coming out with plans and proposals that I think will include much of what we are talking about, as potentially, legally, instituted. I think they are looking at where and how development will take place, which and what buildings might be required to be raised, other aspects of what they might consider to be responsive to - I don’t want to even second guess what their whole scope of work is but I wouldn’t be surprised if they included things that dealt with evacuation and other aspects for the civic communities and that should be released on the 31st May.

CY: Do you think that any action that has been taken from October 29th to now, rebuilding has been happening, will blunt any effects that the new plans/legislation might provoke when they come out? Will the current action just continue into the future or is there chance for it to be re-assessed? L: I think that whatever has been done, by the time new legislation comes about, will stay and then there will be a new period of initial response. A group is running a competition for Long Island and the competition brief is considering the landscape of communities if some houses are raised and some houses aren’t. I thought this was an interesting thing to do because I have been to a couple of workshops where the same situation has been addressed. What I am waiting to see, and I hope that besides this report which is being done by the City which will result in some legislation, there is also a big study being done by the Army Corps of Engineers, and this is being done with $20 million gotton by Charles Chuck Schumer, New York Congressman. $20 million dollars to study the effects of sea level rise on the Hudson River valley and New York harbour. So they have their $20 million, which is a good bit of money, and they have I think six months to do that study, starting from maybe a month ago. So what we have in front of us is the City study, the SIRR due out on May 31st and the Army Corps of Engineers study. I don’t think until such studies as those are completed, very much new legislation is going to be enacted. Those two pieces along with what FEMA has issued as its new flood maps and the insurance companies have said will be their assessment for people who do what the flood maps encourage, which means if you are in the V or the A Zone you will raise your building then your insurance will go down. If you are in the V or the A Zone and you stay as you are your insurance will be higher. The example we discussed was the difference between stay as you are $10 grand and raise your building $500 – so that’s a big incentive, economic incentive, and legal requirement that you relocate your first floor. Now that’s not legislation yet and until these other studies are complete, and you know I get newspapers calling me up, and without wanting to claim New York City’s expert on this, I say I think you have to keep a watch on the reports that come out to see what, if any, legislation is being produced. I am not aware of any. CY: And the AIA was going to publish a report. L: We ARE going to publish a report, give me one second – I am talking to some people in about 20 minutes about the editing of the final draft. I am going to see if they have any problem with that report being distributed to you – there is a summary and one with more detail around the summary and a lot of statements from people about what should be done but it doesn’t refer to what has been done because there isn’t that much. This is kind of where we are. We are finishing up the Emergency and Response stage, I guess you could say we have moved into Recovery and we are mostly through and moving into re-building, I think we are doing a lot of that with less than ideal and more voluntary actions towards the relocation of equipment, boilers and new buildings. The new buildings are going to move their equipment from the basement into the upper floors, the logical responses and the general discussions about what good design will be with sea level rise. The only place I know, as this was prior to Sandy, was the zoning in Hunters Point, Queens, where it said no basements and that is a good one to look at. I know when the New York Times featured that as a front page article because it was so unique and unusual “No basements in Queens because of High Water”. Some early responses have been made. The thing I am looking forward to (and this might go in your work) is the idea of asking individual building owners to modify their buildings in case of high water as opposed to surrounding whole areas with a defensive barrier and leaving those buildings where they are. I think that is a big decision. I think that is a Holland scale decision. I think the Dutch have been working on this for an awfully long time, whether you build dykes or boulders, whether you raise buildings. They have done some fairly good experiments as the climate has changed because they are ahead on that game but we haven’t had that conversation to my mind – I don’t think we are going to raise the buildings in Lower Manhattan. I think we are going to surround Lower Manhattan by some flood barrier. Some people say we will put in the soft edge but a soft edge won’t stop waters coming in and flooding the streets. Nobody wants to see their streets flooded if they can help it. So we will say wait and see, I’m not saying that I have seen any studies that start to address that, I hope I do.

APPENDIX 2 Tr anscript Interview with Deirdre Freerick, Attorney for New York City Council, On 19 April 2013 by Catherine Yarwood Deirdre assisted in Upper Breezy and Forechannel after Hurricane Irene for hurricane preparedness and this year during Hurricane Sandy the Mayor’s office acted as primary, the Council came as secondary and I was the CoCoordinator for Queens County. C: I am interested in exactly what is happening at the moment, at the rebuilding at the Rockaways focusing in on the public housing and the bungalow type housing. D: So more of the low to mid income housing. C: Yes and I am trying to get a sense of whether recovery has been slower at this site compared to other sites. D: If you look at a map and look at Beach 9th where you have Baywater. Baywater has primarily has big homes – that was completely submerged. They worked on themselves and got up and running. The public housing which is next to Baywater, they would be considered homes but down further where you have some of the taller buildings they actually fared better because they are high up but they lost their mechanicals – so they lost their boilers, their electrical, their elevators were out so they need to get generators in but to get these in they need to rip out the basement and pump out the water but what are you going to do there is no place for it to go when everywhere is flooded. When you are talking about 10th to 50th, and the backside around 60th because it is the bay – the houses over there once they got the generator and the replacement of the mechanical – they were ok. The smaller houses, like going into like the 20th to 40th area, Forlock Way are significantly smaller homes but they go upside to the mid-section so you could have one house on one block be dry and then you have another house further down be basically soaked. They are having problems with sinkholes where you had this saturation of the yard. Those houses in the 20th to 40th all have yards then when you go up to 80’s to 90’s these houses are very close together and they were significantly taken out. They are usually one-family homes, the people live in their homes, the Rockaways in itself is special because you don’t have a lot of people who live on say beach 92 street, their cousin lives on 94th street, their other cousin lives on 96th street –it’s not uncommon for large families. The evacuation was hindered because they didn’t have a cousin’s house to go to that wasn’t in the flood zone so that was one of the other problems. Habitat Humanity has come in along with some other organizations on pumping and gutting – basically ripping out the bottom and then they went back in and the city has done the rapid repair programmes to get them temporarily housed in place and so what it does it gives them electric and plumbing like a hot water heater and then they had to rip out all the wet materials but then your inner home that doesn’t have complete walls but you are at least up and running and you can work in the house because one of the biggest things is that you are going to do repairs. If you don’t have electric you don’t have a drill or other tools or a dry are to do that. However, in order for them to be able to survive and go forward, according to the new maps they are going to have to raise somewhere between 7 and 12 feet across the peninsula. In homes in the Cowsname you are fine because they will end up having to take out the first floor and cement it up. From then on they are going to have to lift and how are they going to do that. Well there are two different zones, there is A Zone and V Zone. If you are in V Zone you have to build for wave action and if in A Zone you need a stronger foundation and you first 10 feet can’t be on a tapis base so basically you are going to have these houses lifted by hydraulic lifts which is going on now. I mean I could send you pictures there, they are in the process of doing that. These are the ones that are going to survive they are getting $35,000 for international compliance costs but you can’t lift a house under $100,000. So you have to pay $45 to $50 grand to put the base in. C: Who is covering those costs? Is it only the residents that can afford these costs can remain there or is there help from the state or federal funds. D: The federal government is providing the international corporate compliance with flood insurance, ICC money, will provide about $35,000 because now your map has changed but now that’s what the big document is how they are trying to come up with other ways to help people get money because how are we going to get people to raise their home and not help them. They don’t have a $100,000 sitting around. The people whose houses were completely destroyed there is a move to bring modular homes and then what they would do is that they would basically build homes with the first 10feet with unlivable space like a garage. Modular homes never really existed/worked in New York – it wasn’t something people did but now we have mass neighbourhoods which have to get up and running and you are not going to be able to build that house so we will have to allow modular homes to be built and then have them boarded. C: Is that a scheme that has been accepted and implemented soon.

D: In Long Island modular homes are coming in now and that is right next to Rockaway. If you look are looking at Rockaway to the left of Long Island we expect Rockaway to start – there is something in there about they are going to have a Truth Contractors to rebuild the homes that were condemned. Most of the home that were built before 1983 did not survive the storm, like 90% of them but everything after that had a high chance of surviving. C: Is that because in 1983 there was a change in building codes? D: Yes. C: Is there any way you can comment as to whether these people can afford these costs, and what will be the demographic make up of the Rockaways in the future. D: I think that Rockaways is different on a lot of things and this doesn’t make a lot of sense but people are afraid that people that are interested in making a quick buck are going to come in and build these huge house but where are these people going to go. The thing is that a lot of people who moved to Rockaway 50 years ago into homes that were traditionally bungalows they still want to be beside the sea and a lot of these people were in the Navy, they had their family in the Rockaway and the Veterans organizations out there, so I don’t think people are going to leave Rockaway because they love it, you can be by the beach you are surrounded by the beach and you are surrounded by water so I think they have to find a way to make it work. Do I think they are going to stay the way they are – No I think that you are going to see high houses, you are going to see where it used to be all single families, I think you are going to have multiply residences where you will have people moving in that will have a four storey/four family home. I think that we have a responsibility to try to figure out a way to make senior housing out there and there was never a time to really do it with open plots of land but I think that because a number of homes on certain blocks were destroyed this might be an opportunity to build that way but that hasn’t been pushed yet. There was a bungalow community on 98th I think those are all being taken out, I don’t think that they survived and I don’t know that they can survive. They were basically little bungalows for the summer. C: In a sense the Rockaways is mainly residential and there are a few homes that you speak about but otherwise the action of recovery is very much on residential – has there not been much emphasis on recovery to businesses or services? D: There are a couple of main strips, the problem is that we have to figure out, they pick up $10 grand for small businesses as they have to pay their bills and get up and running. The truth is there are a lot of people in Rockaway that were busy on their house and didn’t go shopping or to the drug store, they are taking care of their home. That is all they are doing but once they can get back in their house in the Springtime we are going to see more traffic. I would say from 16th street it is pretty much up and running, on 90th to 94th street a number of those stores have not opened and may not open and then on 128th street, a small group of shops in Bell Harbour, that is open, Breezypoint is open. Down further in Far Rockaway opens but Mid Rockaway the ones that stayed open were in Auburn (?) and that is a development that was built on ….(?) that was built about 5 feet higher, their supermarket was open right away. Everyone had to walk because all the cars were lost. C: And the subway is still operating. D: The subway is an elevator train so that pretty much got up and running but is isolated with not a lot of trips. The bus was problematic as the traffic was atrocious with people ripping out their homes and putting the stuff in the middle of the street and you had people working on telephone lines, electric lines, the utilities – you couldn’t really get anywhere. C: What is the situation now? D: Yes, people are making a real effort in New York City that people go and buy in Rockaway so I come down and support the local businesses. That is what we are trying to do. C: You mentioned that the $35,000 will come from one initiative but people will need about $100,000 to raise their house – do you have any sense of where the funding will come from? D: The Mayors plan/proposal is to do rapid repairs which is the CDBG funding where we would have a pool of contractors coming in and providing certain services for those people. We recognize there is going to be a big gap and we will try to come up with ways to negotiate better prices and then find a way that we are assisting people through this. The thing is that after Katriona in Louisianna , New Orleans, was that people who had contractors laid their homes but they didn’t put in the bottom, they didn’t put in the foundation correctly and that was problematic. We are trying to avoid that by having a certain contractor to do that. Hopefully, that document will get approved, it is part of the proposal and we are hoping the FEMA will fund it and then the City will administer it. C: So FEMA the federal agency controls all of the funds and then the City gets delegated those in the CDBG D: Yes the City is asking for the ability to basically give out money. C: Finally, does that money get distributed to Community District 14 first or how does that money filter down? D: Through the City. The City would come in and basically administer it and that is it, the individual would get the benefit of it and it would be over-seen by Rapid Repairs.

APPENDIX 3

Partial Transcript Interview with Maria Ailova of Terreform ONE & Planetary ONE On 16 December 2012 by Hayden White MA: Need for strong commitment from politicians in the municipality, then the social issue.The Rockaways – problems go back to Robert Moses where all these housing projects and retirement communities were built in low-lying land that is prone to flooding to begin with. The building codes will have to change, no longer can you put the mechanical systems in the basements. You cannot rely on citizens to take care of themselves, it has to be a top down approach. We have had two 100-year storms in two years – what is clear is it is not a 100-year storm any more. It is an estuary reef, naturally, water goes in and out and all the edges are soft. Yet these areas are desirable areas – can be accessed by sea and can travel to inland lands by the river – which is why people settle here. The desire to create more land results in the filling in and creation of lowlands with a hard edge - caused by humans developing the estuaries of rivers. Elevator buildings – completely dependant on electricity, even to get their water (need for pressure) – this is a problem. Moral failure – the biggest city in America and can’t look after its people. In December there were still 15,000 apartments without heat. Climate change is a moral issue – even if use of fossil fuels, development of coastlines makes good economic sense – it is a moral disaster. Immediate issue is the social issue – addressing a large number of people living in density, convincing people that the boardwalk should not go back. Requires shift in policy and belief – America deals with water in a way that can be profitable. The capacity of the Panama Canal is being doubled – that will direct much more traffic from China to the East Coast – the 3 big ports on the East Coast are competing for that traffic – generates huge amount of revenue for a city. The areas that must keep a hard edge for the waterways to be navigable and profitable will keep it. Private initiative – developers are conscious of incorporation of certain systems – that make economic sense for them.