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What Underwater Canyons Can Teach Us About the Future of Urbanism
New measures to protect deep-sea ecosystems show a new "blue" approach to urban planning.
Raise your hand if you've heard of the other Washington—the one that's underwater. Extra points if you’ve heard of the other Baltimore, the other Norfolk, or the other Wilmington.
These titular counterparts are as diverse, complicated, and ever-changing as any urban center. They are deep-sea canyons, just 70 miles off the U.S.'s mid-Atlantic coast, where the continental shelf drops off to the seafloor. The steep, narrow walls of these chasms scrape ocean depths from 100 to 3,500 meters. That last measurement is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, and about seven times the length of One World Trade Center, the tallest office building in the world.