Even the World's Top Experts Aren't Sure What New York Should Do to Prevent Another Sandy

Debris that once was homes in the Rockaways still fills the parking lot at Jacob Riis Park. Residents of Staten Island continue to rip moldy sheetrock from the walls of their homes. Red Hook business owners are trying to figure out if their livelihoods will ever be viable again. But at a conference in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, just a couple hundred yards from the Hudson River, the focus was already moving from recovery to rebuilding. And the future looked as messy and uncertain as the present, a place where urgency and caution are colliding.

At a half-day conference called "New York City (SOS) Sink or Swim," the Municipal Art Society of New York and the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University had assembled an impressive group of speakers and panelists, including two Obama cabinet members, Shaun Donovan and Ken Salazar. Just six weeks after Sandy smacked the city upside the head with a cold wave of reality, this roomful of smart people was discussing the question that’s on everyone’s mind: How can we rebuild and retrofit the city so that it won’t be swamped by the next superstorm – which, as everyone present acknowledged, could be coming any time now?