Patrick Ward/Corbis
A flood barrier on the Thames, one of the ideas American experts are looking at in the wake of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy.
Not a month after Hurricane Sandy there's a rough consensus about how to respond. America is already looking to places like London, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Tokyo, where sea walls, levees and wetlands, flood plains and floating city blocks have been conceived.
Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia and more.
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
Tineke Dijkstra/Hollandse Hoogte
The Maeslant surge barrier between Rotterdam and the North Sea. Building similar projects to protect the New York region would test the limits of American democracy
New York clearly ought to have taken certain steps a while back, no-brainers after the fact. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority ought to have installed floodgates and louvers at vulnerable subway entrances and vents. Consolidated Edison should have gotten its transformers, and Verizon its switching stations, out of harm's way, and Congress should have ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to study the impact of giant barriers to block parts of the city from the sea.
Scientists, architects, planners and others have, of course, been mulling over these issues for years. They've pressed for more parkland and bike lanes, green roofs and energy-efficient buildings, and warned about the need for backup generators, wetland edges along Lower Manhattan and barrier islands for the harbor to cushion the blow of rushing tides.
Hurricane Sandy was a toll paid for procrastination. The good news? We don't need to send a bunch of Nobel laureates into the desert now, hoping they come up with some new gizmo to save the planet. Solutions are at hand. Money shouldn't be a problem either, considering the hundreds of billions of dollars, and more lives, another Sandy or two will cost.
So the problem is not technological or, from a long-term cost-benefit perspective, financial.
Rather it is the existential challenge to the messy democracy we've devised. The hardest part of what lies ahead won't be deciding whether to construct Eiffel Tower-size sea walls across the Verrazano Narrows and Hell Gate, or overhauling the city's sewage and storm water system, which spews toxic waste into rivers whenever a couple of inches of rain fall because the sea levels have already risen so much. These are monumental tasks.
But more difficult still will be staring down the pain, dislocation and inequity that promise to upend lives, undo communities and shake assumptions about city life and society. More than requiring the untangling of colossal red tape, saving New York and the whole region for the centuries ahead will become a test of civic unity.
In New York last week to tour the damage, President Obama named Shaun Donovan, his secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a New Yorker and former housing official in the city, to spearhead federal recovery efforts. Mr. Donovan is an obvious choice. But then the president reflexively pledged (and the vice president followed up with the same promise on Sunday) to restore ravaged neighborhoods and homes in Queens and on Staten Island to the way they were before Hurricane Sandy.
That was business as usual, and the last thing the region or the country needs. At this point there's no logic, politics and sentiment aside, to FEMA simply rebuilding single-family homes on barrier islands like the Rockaways, where they shouldn't have been built in the first place, and like bowling pins will tumble again after the next hurricane strikes.
"Retreat is a dirty word," as Robert S. Young, a North Carolina geologist, has described American sentiment, but better finally to face reality and make plans for smarter construction, compensation and even, where necessary, relocation. Elected officials and utility companies shouldn't just turn on the lights and heat and restore crippled elevators in forgotten public housing projects that were inadequately designed in the first place.
Common sense dictates upgrading many of these projects to withstand floods but also devising new homes elsewhere for some residents. Cost-benefit analyses, long overdue, should answer tough questions like whether it's actually worth saving some neighborhoods in flood zones. Communities like Breezy Point should be given knowledge, power and choice about their options, then the responsibility to live by that choice.
This means embracing a policy of compassion and honest talk. It's no good merely to try to go back to the way things were, because they are not.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Critic’s Notebook: Changes Needed After Hurricane Sandy Include Politics
Dengan url
http://homepageglobal.blogspot.com/2012/11/criticas-notebook-changes-needed-after.html?m=0
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Critic’s Notebook: Changes Needed After Hurricane Sandy Include Politics
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Critic’s Notebook: Changes Needed After Hurricane Sandy Include Politics
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar