Checking on the Status of Rebuild by Design

Audrey Wachs checks in on the status of the six projects awarded funding as winners in the Rebuild by Design competition, a 2013 competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that awarded $930 million to implement the first phase of resilience plans.

The six winners of the competition, announced in June 2014, have since scaled and renamed their projects "to suit available funding." In addition to bringing readers up to speed on the history and purpose of the competition, Wachs goes project by project to update each on its process in the early phases of implementation. The six projects are as follows:

• The Hunts Point Resiliency Implementation Project (PennDesign/OLIN), which "builds off of the Hunts Point Lifelines proposal for a mostly industrial area in the South Bronx."
• "[The Bjarke Ingels Group's] initial proposal, BIG U, called for ten miles of continuous waterfront flood protection, from Manhattan’s East 42nd Street, to the Battery, and looping up the west side to 57th Street. The project was scaled down and renamed the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR)."
• "Living Breakwaters (SCAPE/Landscape Architecture) calls for offshore breakwaters and vegetated dunes to soften large waves and prevent shoreline erosion."
• "Living with the Bay (Interboro) addresses the Mill River, a north-south tributary in Nassau County, Long Island."
• "Hudson River: Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge (OMA) addresses flooding in the New Jersey river towns on the mouth of the Hudson."
• "New Meadowlands: Productive City + Regional Park (MIT CAU + ZUS + URBANISTEN) has an initial award of $150 million to secure and reintegrate 14 mostly low-density communities in and around New Jersey’s Meadowlands."

Wachs provides more funding and planning details for each of these projects.