6 ms·

Boston’s Seaport District may be a testing ground for climate change adaptation

54 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

akshayB 7y ago
With water levels going up and climate change patterns, I find it counter intuitive that lot of luxury/premium properties are built close of water. This not only results into higher insurance rates on these properties but in-case of any natural disaster premiums of regular properties around the area would also take a hit because someone decided to construct a fancy build right next to waterfront.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  As a Masshole (I don't care if this pronoun offends you, it's what I call myself) who doesn't own waterfront property I'm not going to lose a nanosecond of sleep over the rich Bostonians who their investment in waterfront property tank or lose their Cape Cod vacation houses. Those people are rich enough to deal. If they don't deal in time well then they're paying the stupid tax. Edit: Sorry, I haven't had my coffee any my cynicism isn't up to normal levels yet. As mentioned, of course they'll get the state to bail them out. There's a chance they might not but as a group they're the ones with the power and the influence. Every few years some houses fall into the sea. It basically always winds up in court with the owners suing the town and/or state. I can't imagine it not going in their favor if the places underwater are in the Boston area. The cumulative political clout would be insurmountable. That said, so what if they bail them out? If they don't bail them out then it's not like the state won't still take everyone's money and spend a large percent of it on other cause that benefits approximately nobody. As far as I care paying state cops to game the overtime system isn't any better or worse than bailing out people who's property is underwater. The difference is just hair splitting because neither of those should be happening.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    They will expect to be bailed out, both literally and financially.
    - Ericson2314 7y ago
      It's nice to hear the original meaning of that. I almost forgot it! Good pun.
    - sp332 7y ago
      I'm not super convinced about that. While it's true that we're ahead of schedule to so speak, Cape Cod has always been a bit of sand pushed up by an old glacier. It's been eroding at an average of three feet every year. Buildings get moved back or left to be swept into the sea constantly. Nantucket used to show visitors a video about how the island was slowly sinking and would eventually disappear. Again, things have accelerated recently, but people in the area already knew that this was all temporary.
  - matthewaveryusa 7y ago
    Just to give an idea of some of the properties there, Pier 4 is slated to have 1 bedrooms < 1k square feet start at 1.2 million, with an HOA of 1.4k/month -- and it goes up from there.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  They will make sure that the state will pay for their flood insurance and disaster relief.
  - ip26 7y ago
    The Fed already heavily subsidizes flood insurance and has for decades, so that part's already done
- bluGill 7y ago
  Luxury/premium properties make the most sense actually: they are not expected to last. When someone spends 200k on a normal 4 bedroom house they expect to live in that house more or less as is for a long time (they often move sooner and may have plans for minor remodeling but no major changes are expected because they can't be afforded). When someone spends $3 million on a large mansion as soon as the ink is dry they call the bulldozer operator (who is already parked outside) to start knocking it down so they can build the mansion they want. In short they are buying location and the cost of the building is a rounding error. If the ocean goes up - well they just build higher, it isn't a significant expense.
  - thehoff 7y ago
    Some of these luxury properties are condos in already very tall buildings (see South Florida for this). And what happens when the first floor of your building is now under water? Sure your 30th floor condo is safe but is it really practical to live there at that point?
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      Not an expert but I highly doubt they are building them so they can be used with them first level underwater. I am pretty sure such a building is a complete loss.
      - jpindar 7y ago
        In my neighborhood (New England coast) there are a number of buildings that are built on pillars, with the area underneath used for parking. Sometimes there are nonloadbearing wall panels installed around them to give some weather protection, sometimes not. They're meant to survive storms, and I think at least some of them could be used if the water was permanently at today's storm surge levels. Most of these buildings were built that way from the start, but at least one on my street was raised on jacks while pillars were put underneath. I wish I'd thought to take pictures of the process.
  - WhompingWindows 7y ago
- dev_dull 7y ago
  Has sea level on the easy coast of the continental US changed materially over the last 100 years? I’m asking seriously. All of the googling I’m doing turns up doomsday scenario articles or high tide observations but not changes to measured sea level.
  - oasisbob 7y ago
    Yes. https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differences-east-coast-sea.html https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differences-east-coast-sea.htm... https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1597 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1597
  - ljcn 7y ago
    Yes, here are a few articles from Tamino's blog. Note the first one is #1 in a 7-part series https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/sea-level-rise-u-s-east-coast-i/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/sea-level-rise-u-s-e... https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/boston-sea-level/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/boston-sea-level/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/moon-over-miami-boston/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/moon-over-miami-bost... The last one (and related posts) is worth a look even though it isn't what you asked for because it discusses how an apparently small increase in sea level can lead to a surprising increase in flood frequency.
    - dev_dull 7y ago
      Just what I was looking for. Thank you!
  - undersuit 7y ago
    The article does mention that the Boston Seaport District now floods a dozen times a year instead of 2-3 times in the 1960s.
    - dev_dull 7y ago
      I found several articles on flooding. Specifically I wanted to know if the sea level is actually rising, which should be something easy to measure.
- nradov 7y ago
  A hundred years ago in most parts of the US the rich people lived up on top of a hill. Poor people lived on the waterfront where they had to be near industrial facilities and occasionally got flooded out. Now the situation is reversed.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    That’s an important point. Hurricanes and flooding used to damage cheap buildings. Now the most expensive real estate is right at the water.
- hackeraccount 7y ago
  But people are richer. All other things equal people find it pleasing to wake up in the morning and look out over the water. If you have the money to build safely right up against the water people will pay it.
adrianN 7y ago
Perhaps these cities should raise money to convince the US government that climate change is manmade and a real threat and urgent, massive action is needed to prevent it from becoming even worse. A few billion here and there for lobbying might in the end be cheaper than building ever higher berms.
- AbrahamParangi 7y ago
  I suspect this is an unpopular opinion but I think the idea that we'll stop climate change with global collective action is just wildly contrary to how human beings work at that scale. Unless we get lucky with some natural carbon negative feedback loop, we're probably stuck engineering our way through it. Whether with climate engineering (unlikely), or just muddling through (very likely).
  - adrianN 7y ago
    If, say, the US or the EU set up a proper carbon tax that is also levied on imports, the rest of the world would probably follow suit.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      William Nordhaus won the Nobel prize for his efforts flushing out this idea into a workable plan. There are no longer any excuses. We have a reasonable, viable plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It's expensive and hard, but a lot less expensive and difficult than the alternative of doing nothing.
    - ovi256 7y ago
      Broke: import tariffs motivated by short-termist trade war one-upmanship and bigotism. Woke: import tarrifs motivated by long-termist climate change reduction. We swear they're not the same thing so they can't have similar effects! This time it will be different and those unenlightened non-Westerns will listen to our thought leadership!
      - 7y ago
jpm_sd 7y ago
“We’re proposing infrastructure that we believe will protect the city,” says Richard McGuinness, a senior planning official working on Boston’s response to climate change. “How do you retreat from billions of dollars of assets? It’s not practical.” [...] The city still needs to raise as much as $1 billion for Seaport defenses. ----- Having lived in the city during the Big Dig, I'd wager that's a lowball estimate.
- ptah 7y ago
  bureaucrats tend to underestimate costs and durations of projects
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Call me cynical, but, that's because they own a stake in the parties executing the project; it's in their interest to make sure the contract passes, then gain financially from it and how much it goes over budget.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      It's not that they literally own a stake. It's that the people in their social circles have a monetary interest so perpetuating boondoggle pork projects results in people around them appreciating them more which results in campaign donations and all sorts of other perks. It's not quite quid-pro-quo, it's just far enough away to maintain plausible deniability. And of course there's all the people who aren't indirectly connected to politicians but who stand to benefit and the politicians will see that they benefit because votes. Look into the rules for billing hours for state police traffic details during the big dig if you want to see a good example with this. Now imagine that kind of fat in every industry that is related to a project and it's easy to see how costs go crazy.
  - lkbm 7y ago
    Not just bureaucrats. People generally -- it's the Planning Fallacy. If you ask someone how long something will take, they tend to give roughly the same answer as if you asked how long it will take in the best case scenario. Estimating project time is hard, and people are bad at it in general. The best method seems to be to instead ask "How long did the most similar project you've done take?" but that does require the estimator to have done a somewhat comparable project.
ilamont 7y ago
I can't read the article, but last year I saw a presentation by a local Boston architect demonstrating how her firm uses 3D modeling software to simulate flooding scenarios not just for the client's building but the surrounding neighborhood. I think that's typical for most projects near sea level nowadays. For photos and video of Seaport flooding: https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_smart_to_invest_in_bosto.html https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_...
rb808 7y ago
These big cities will be fine. They can easily afford to protect from rising flood waters. Its the smaller cities and towns all down the coasts that can't afford to do anything or are literally built on sand. Cities in poor countries are going to have trouble too, but that is a different issue.
ptah 7y ago
that's one way to fuel economic growth :)
est31 7y ago
An amazing talk by Bud Ris about the challenges Boston faces from climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk
- r_klancer 7y ago
  Why does that video not have more views?
  - est31 7y ago
    Sad but popular != quality. I found the talk very informative.
thrower123 7y ago
Most of modern Boston is built on trash dumped into the harbor to make more land, so I can imagine that they are going to have some issues with any sea rises. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston-landfill-maps-history/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston-landfill-... One side-effect of all this land-filling is that it is really difficult to get a feel for what the place would have been like historically. For instance, the campaigns of 1775 don't make a lot of sense if you are reading about them and trying to look at a modern map.

54 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

With water levels going up and climate change patterns, I find it counter intuitive that lot of luxury/premium properties are built close of water. This not only results into higher insurance rates on these properties but in-case of any natural disaster premiums of regular properties around the area would also take a hit because someone decided to construct a fancy build right next to waterfront.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
As a Masshole (I don't care if this pronoun offends you, it's what I call myself) who doesn't own waterfront property I'm not going to lose a nanosecond of sleep over the rich Bostonians who their investment in waterfront property tank or lose their Cape Cod vacation houses. Those people are rich enough to deal. If they don't deal in time well then they're paying the stupid tax. Edit: Sorry, I haven't had my coffee any my cynicism isn't up to normal levels yet. As mentioned, of course they'll get the state to bail them out. There's a chance they might not but as a group they're the ones with the power and the influence. Every few years some houses fall into the sea. It basically always winds up in court with the owners suing the town and/or state. I can't imagine it not going in their favor if the places underwater are in the Boston area. The cumulative political clout would be insurmountable. That said, so what if they bail them out? If they don't bail them out then it's not like the state won't still take everyone's money and spend a large percent of it on other cause that benefits approximately nobody. As far as I care paying state cops to game the overtime system isn't any better or worse than bailing out people who's property is underwater. The difference is just hair splitting because neither of those should be happening.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  They will expect to be bailed out, both literally and financially.
  - Ericson2314 7y ago
    It's nice to hear the original meaning of that. I almost forgot it! Good pun.
  - sp332 7y ago
    I'm not super convinced about that. While it's true that we're ahead of schedule to so speak, Cape Cod has always been a bit of sand pushed up by an old glacier. It's been eroding at an average of three feet every year. Buildings get moved back or left to be swept into the sea constantly. Nantucket used to show visitors a video about how the island was slowly sinking and would eventually disappear. Again, things have accelerated recently, but people in the area already knew that this was all temporary.
- matthewaveryusa 7y ago
  Just to give an idea of some of the properties there, Pier 4 is slated to have 1 bedrooms < 1k square feet start at 1.2 million, with an HOA of 1.4k/month -- and it goes up from there.
maxxxxx 7y ago
They will make sure that the state will pay for their flood insurance and disaster relief.
- ip26 7y ago
  The Fed already heavily subsidizes flood insurance and has for decades, so that part's already done
bluGill 7y ago
Luxury/premium properties make the most sense actually: they are not expected to last. When someone spends 200k on a normal 4 bedroom house they expect to live in that house more or less as is for a long time (they often move sooner and may have plans for minor remodeling but no major changes are expected because they can't be afforded). When someone spends $3 million on a large mansion as soon as the ink is dry they call the bulldozer operator (who is already parked outside) to start knocking it down so they can build the mansion they want. In short they are buying location and the cost of the building is a rounding error. If the ocean goes up - well they just build higher, it isn't a significant expense.
- thehoff 7y ago
  Some of these luxury properties are condos in already very tall buildings (see South Florida for this). And what happens when the first floor of your building is now under water? Sure your 30th floor condo is safe but is it really practical to live there at that point?
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    Not an expert but I highly doubt they are building them so they can be used with them first level underwater. I am pretty sure such a building is a complete loss.
    - jpindar 7y ago
      In my neighborhood (New England coast) there are a number of buildings that are built on pillars, with the area underneath used for parking. Sometimes there are nonloadbearing wall panels installed around them to give some weather protection, sometimes not. They're meant to survive storms, and I think at least some of them could be used if the water was permanently at today's storm surge levels. Most of these buildings were built that way from the start, but at least one on my street was raised on jacks while pillars were put underneath. I wish I'd thought to take pictures of the process.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
dev_dull 7y ago
Has sea level on the easy coast of the continental US changed materially over the last 100 years? I’m asking seriously. All of the googling I’m doing turns up doomsday scenario articles or high tide observations but not changes to measured sea level.
- oasisbob 7y ago
  Yes. https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differences-east-coast-sea.html https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differences-east-coast-sea.htm... https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1597 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1597
- ljcn 7y ago
  Yes, here are a few articles from Tamino's blog. Note the first one is #1 in a 7-part series https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/sea-level-rise-u-s-east-coast-i/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/sea-level-rise-u-s-e... https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/boston-sea-level/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/boston-sea-level/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/moon-over-miami-boston/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/moon-over-miami-bost... The last one (and related posts) is worth a look even though it isn't what you asked for because it discusses how an apparently small increase in sea level can lead to a surprising increase in flood frequency.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    Just what I was looking for. Thank you!
- undersuit 7y ago
  The article does mention that the Boston Seaport District now floods a dozen times a year instead of 2-3 times in the 1960s.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    I found several articles on flooding. Specifically I wanted to know if the sea level is actually rising, which should be something easy to measure.
nradov 7y ago
A hundred years ago in most parts of the US the rich people lived up on top of a hill. Poor people lived on the waterfront where they had to be near industrial facilities and occasionally got flooded out. Now the situation is reversed.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  That’s an important point. Hurricanes and flooding used to damage cheap buildings. Now the most expensive real estate is right at the water.
hackeraccount 7y ago
But people are richer. All other things equal people find it pleasing to wake up in the morning and look out over the water. If you have the money to build safely right up against the water people will pay it.

adrianN 7y ago

Perhaps these cities should raise money to convince the US government that climate change is manmade and a real threat and urgent, massive action is needed to prevent it from becoming even worse. A few billion here and there for lobbying might in the end be cheaper than building ever higher berms.

AbrahamParangi 7y ago
I suspect this is an unpopular opinion but I think the idea that we'll stop climate change with global collective action is just wildly contrary to how human beings work at that scale. Unless we get lucky with some natural carbon negative feedback loop, we're probably stuck engineering our way through it. Whether with climate engineering (unlikely), or just muddling through (very likely).
- adrianN 7y ago
  If, say, the US or the EU set up a proper carbon tax that is also levied on imports, the rest of the world would probably follow suit.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    William Nordhaus won the Nobel prize for his efforts flushing out this idea into a workable plan. There are no longer any excuses. We have a reasonable, viable plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It's expensive and hard, but a lot less expensive and difficult than the alternative of doing nothing.
  - ovi256 7y ago
    Broke: import tariffs motivated by short-termist trade war one-upmanship and bigotism. Woke: import tarrifs motivated by long-termist climate change reduction. We swear they're not the same thing so they can't have similar effects! This time it will be different and those unenlightened non-Westerns will listen to our thought leadership!
    - 7y ago

jpm_sd 7y ago

“We’re proposing infrastructure that we believe will protect the city,” says Richard McGuinness, a senior planning official working on Boston’s response to climate change. “How do you retreat from billions of dollars of assets? It’s not practical.” [...] The city still needs to raise as much as $1 billion for Seaport defenses. ----- Having lived in the city during the Big Dig, I'd wager that's a lowball estimate.

ptah 7y ago
bureaucrats tend to underestimate costs and durations of projects
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Call me cynical, but, that's because they own a stake in the parties executing the project; it's in their interest to make sure the contract passes, then gain financially from it and how much it goes over budget.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    It's not that they literally own a stake. It's that the people in their social circles have a monetary interest so perpetuating boondoggle pork projects results in people around them appreciating them more which results in campaign donations and all sorts of other perks. It's not quite quid-pro-quo, it's just far enough away to maintain plausible deniability. And of course there's all the people who aren't indirectly connected to politicians but who stand to benefit and the politicians will see that they benefit because votes. Look into the rules for billing hours for state police traffic details during the big dig if you want to see a good example with this. Now imagine that kind of fat in every industry that is related to a project and it's easy to see how costs go crazy.
- lkbm 7y ago
  Not just bureaucrats. People generally -- it's the Planning Fallacy. If you ask someone how long something will take, they tend to give roughly the same answer as if you asked how long it will take in the best case scenario. Estimating project time is hard, and people are bad at it in general. The best method seems to be to instead ask "How long did the most similar project you've done take?" but that does require the estimator to have done a somewhat comparable project.

ilamont 7y ago

I can't read the article, but last year I saw a presentation by a local Boston architect demonstrating how her firm uses 3D modeling software to simulate flooding scenarios not just for the client's building but the surrounding neighborhood. I think that's typical for most projects near sea level nowadays. For photos and video of Seaport flooding: https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_smart_to_invest_in_bosto.html https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_...

rb808 7y ago

These big cities will be fine. They can easily afford to protect from rising flood waters. Its the smaller cities and towns all down the coasts that can't afford to do anything or are literally built on sand. Cities in poor countries are going to have trouble too, but that is a different issue.

ptah 7y ago

that's one way to fuel economic growth :)

est31 7y ago

An amazing talk by Bud Ris about the challenges Boston faces from climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk

r_klancer 7y ago
Why does that video not have more views?
- est31 7y ago
  Sad but popular != quality. I found the talk very informative.

thrower123 7y ago

Most of modern Boston is built on trash dumped into the harbor to make more land, so I can imagine that they are going to have some issues with any sea rises. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston-landfill-maps-history/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston-landfill-... One side-effect of all this land-filling is that it is really difficult to get a feel for what the place would have been like historically. For instance, the campaigns of 1775 don't make a lot of sense if you are reading about them and trying to look at a modern map.