On the Waterfront in Post-Sandy New York

For several years New York City has been exploring how to plan for climate change, but last fall Hurricane Sandy exposed the many vulnerabilities of the coastal metropolis. As Tom Vanderbilt writes: "The sea will not be forgotten."

On Places, Vanderbilt surveys the landscape and politics of both early response and long-range efforts, and he explores the persistent challenges — political, economic, cultural — that make it hard to transform a centuries-old settlement.

From the East River Esplanade (one of the few places on Manhattan where you can “get down and touch the water”) to the South Ferry Station where a bundle of construction timber caused $1 billion in damages, from the Red Hook IKEA that became a federal disaster recovery center to the ambitious plans for Cornell's Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island, Vanderbilt gets on the ground with experts facing the new reality of planning for storm surges and rising seas.