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The climate crisis has found a home in the Jewel Streets. This small community of 300 New Yorkers, more commonly known as the Hole, straddles the Brooklyn/Queens Border, four miles from Kennedy International Airport. As a recent Times article puts it, “perhaps no other neighborhood in the city better illustrates the challenges of climate change.”
The Hole is just four feet above sea level, the lowest point in the city. The location prevents it from being connected to the city’s sewer system, so residents use cesspools and septic tanks. Any significant rainfall floods the streets. Rising sea levels have led to an increase in the groundwater table, causing sewage flooding in the Hole.
Although the Hole is four miles from the ocean, it is built on land similar to the coastal conditions of Jamaica Bay. “From a geological point of view,” a climate and disaster risk management expert told the Times , “it’s not an area that should have ever been settled in the first place.”
The climate-related challenge the Hole presents the city is as much political and social as it is environmental. Despite the conditions, many in the community do not want to leave—and it is understandable. If the Hole were condemned tomorrow, its mostly low-income residents would struggle to find affordable housing in a city with few options.
The Hole is a harbinger of the bind cities around the world face. Half of the global population lives in urban areas. By mid-decade, that figure is expected to rise to 70 percent. Like the Hole, many of the regions most susceptible to climate change will be home to people who cannot—or do not want to—just pack up and relocate.
Questions of equity underlie any urban climate plan. As climate change intensifies, urban planning and climate planning will be one and the same.
The City of New York has allocated $75 million for a Jewel Streets climate resiliency plan , to be developed with community input. To understand how it might unfold, consider a Florida community thousands of miles south facing similar climate impacts.
Miami Beach, is an affluent community but it is an island surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. The Hole is an island in all but name—miles from the Atlantic but connected by geology to the coastline. Like the Hole, Miami Beach is a mere four feet above sea level, and already experiencing increased flooding.
Several mitigation measures currently in progress in Miami Beach are being considered for implementation in the Hole. These include the elevation of streets and the development of green spaces designed to retain water.
Miami Beach has adopted a geographic approach to the problem. Officials use sophisticated mapping techniques to assess risks, foster communication among stakeholders and residents, and track results.
Any city can be visualized as a series of data layers on a map. Layers about the built environment sit atop data layers about the natural environment. It’s imperative to see how these layers interact. The city changes the land on which it is built, and the land influences the functioning of the city. One way to think about what is happening in the Hole, where snakes are now a common sight and mushroom spores grow on people’s walls, is as a massive acceleration of this interaction.
The essence of a geographic approach involves a close reading of these data layers, using the creative problem-solving power of maps. Crucially, each layer of information can be analyzed separately or as part of a larger, easy-to-understand map.
How might this geographic approach be applied in the context of urban climate change? Consider the steps to resilience outlined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
1. Understand and Explore Hazards
By mapping a city, we gain insight into how climate change affects it. For the Hole, this could mean mapping where and how often flooding is happening, and how these floods are changing over time. For other impacted or vulnerable areas of the city, it could mean understanding extreme heat conditions or carbon emissions or emergency response protocols.
2. Analyze and Assess Vulnerabilities and Risk
New York is the nation’s premier coastal city. Its 520-mile coastline is larger than that of Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami combined. No city has more to lose from storm surge, tidal flooding, and sea level rise. As goes the Hole, so goes New York. Maps can help officials analyze and assess how other parts of the city will experience these hazards as climate change intensifies.
3. Investigate and Communicate
Mitigating climate change requires a collective effort, involving several City of New York offices, as well as the public. Geographic information systems technology, or GIS, provides a framework for these efforts. GIS maps, dashboards, imagery, videos, and other storytelling tools can unite stakeholders in effective collaboration.
4. Prioritize and Plan
Climate change mitigation requires a constant rethinking of priorities. 3D digital geospatial twins can model neighborhoods or the entire city, allowing officials to imagine scenarios and test their results.
5. Take Action
From smart maps and apps to dashboards and digital twins—science and technology can guide planning and implementation as we take on this climate challenge. And we can use that same approach to show constituents how the city is making progress in its goals.
To learn more about climate solutions in New York City, read the ebook.
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, 2024-04-17 14:56:33
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