The Fight to Rescue Lower Manhattan From the Next Sandy

The coastal areas of New York, particularly those lining Lower Manhattan, have two pretty clear choices in the post-Sandy era. One is to retreat from the shoreline so the next flood has far less of an impact. Writing about that possibility shortly after the storm, New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten said shrinking from the shore would be as great a change as the city's known since the days of Henry Hudson — "and a dreadful one to get used to."

Too dreadful, it appears, for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently embraced the second option: advancing to the shoreline with a bigger shield. Back in June, Bloomberg outlined a plan for Seaport City, a new neighborhood in Lower Manhattan specifically designed to protect the southeast edge of the island from the next great flood. Last week's request for proposals to study the idea in detail promoted Seaport City from the realm of fantasy into that of legitimate possibility.