Post-Sandy, Designers Are Forced to Imagine Asking People to Move

The numerous re-planning efforts after Hurricane Sandy have produced enticing renderings of designer dunes and fish-filled inland bays. Yet there's been little serious discussion of what happens when rising seas put many of those happy places underwater — until now.

Among the ten ambitious proposals unveiled earlier this month by Rebuild by Design, the high-speed, invited competition sponsored by a presidential task force, two teams tiptoed into the fraught territory of what’s called Managed Retreat. They imagined how to entice people to seek safer refuge from their beloved shore. Rebuild, which is guided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and other nonprofit funders, was intended to surface just such innovation.