Jenny Cabrera MBA (Hons)’s Post

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New York City, the place where dreams are made, where every street is woven with history and fueled by ambition. But beneath this towering skyline, another story is unfolding. 1 of rising waters and shrinking space. 1 of increasingly frequent flooding and a housing market that's gone through the roof. That's what the city of New York is facing. But what if there was a single solution to both problems, A solution as audacious as it is necessary. And New York into the sea. An idea that would take decades to construct and cost over $30 billion. So what's the plan? And could this ever be built in the 1st place? We have to take a look at Manhattan itself. If you've never been there, here's what it looks like. Bang at the center of New York City, a 60 square kilometer island surrounded by rivers on all sides. You've got the Hudson to the West, the Harlem to the north, and the East River, you guessed it, to the east. In terms of population density, Manhattan. Is one of the most crowded islands on the entire planet. As of 2024, there are 1.6 million people living there. That's 30,000 per square kilometer. Geez, when things get even worse during work hours. Manhattan is the heart of the New York economy. With the Stock Exchange on Wall Street plus hundreds of other financial institutions. Every Monday to Friday, commuters press in from the rest of the city and the island's population almost double s to 3.9. Million. To fit, everyone in Manhattan is extremely vertical. The island skyline is dominated by skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building, the Central Park Tower, and the One World Trade Center, the 7th tallest building in the world. Expanding upwards like this is a great solution on an island with limited floor space. But Manhattan hasn't just expanded upwards, it's also expanded outwards. Obviously there weren't any skyscrapers on it, but as well as that the island was 25% smaller. It first started to grow thanks to this guy Thomas Dongan. He traveled to America in 1682 and became the governor of a small English settlement at the southern end of Manhattan. Dongan became governor. One of the first things he did was dump some dirt into the Hudson River. Why? He wanted to expand the coast and set up a battery on the newly constructed land. Fortified spot for heavy defensive guns. So if you've ever visited modern Manhattan, you might have been to Battery Park. That's right on the spot where Thomas Dongan dumped that dirt into the river. As expansions go, it was pretty minor, just a few square meters of land, but it set the scene for the next 3 centuries. As time went on, the island of Manhattan got bigger and bigger and bigger. The East River waterfront was gradually expanded outwards. The West side of the island was expanded too. Here's what the island looked like in 1865, two centuries after Dongan arrived there. The green parts are the original natural island, and the red parts are man made land. These expansions had a range of purposes. In some cases, people were just smoothing out the coastline, making it easier to build ports and docks. But the main reason for expansion was making more space. But by this point, towards the end of the 19th century, the island was already home to around 1.4 million people. The city of New York had also spread beyond the island of Manhattan, with people now living on pieces of land like the area now known as Brooklyn. But the majority of the people who lived in New York were still living on Manhattan. Throughout the 20th century, the population kept growing, and so did the edges would later become East River Drive. Then in the 1960s, rubble pulled up building the World Trade Center was used to build Battery Park City. As we said before, modern Manhattan is 25% bigger than the original island. If Thomas Dongan was alive today, he'd struggled to even recognize it. But maybe this is just the beginning. It's time to talk about new Mannahatta. That incredible plan for Manhattan Island's biggest expansion yet? It's the brainchild of this guy, Jason Barr, a professor of economics in Newark. In 2022, he wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times which laid out his idea in full. 7 square kilometers of extra land. That's what Barr proposed. It's a 10% extension to the existing island, stretching S into the waters of New York Harbor, incorporating the land mass of Governors Island on the way. This new land would be covered by and were quoting bar here, housing in all shapes and sizes. From traditional brownstones to five story apartment buildings to high-rise towers. As you can probably guess, Barr wanted all of this to ease the pressure on New York's growing population. Remember, at the start of the 20th century, there were 3 million people in the city. Now, just over a century later, that number has passed 8 million. New York has more people than any other city in the United States, with more than twice as many as Los Angeles, which is the second biggest city on that list, and the city's current housing projects. Are really struggling to keep up with the demand now thankfully, since the COVID-19 pandemic, this problem has eased a little bit there's been a slight decline in the city's population as more and more people start to work remotely and move away from urban areas. But as of 2024, this trend appears to be turning around. So much demand for limited apartments, but the average New Yorker will find themselves spending almost $4000 on their monthly rent good Lord to put that into perspective, it's more than. Double the national average for the already expensive United States. But New Mannahatta would provide new homes for 1/4 of a million people, assuming those homes are priced affordably. And of course, Barr said they would be. They could ease the pressure off of the rental market and give New Yorkers some much needed breathing space. These new homes would be perfectly located too, right at the heart of the city. But New Manna Hata isn't just a solution to overpopulation. Now, it's easy to forget sometimes, but when it comes to climate change? New York is right in the firing line. It's a low lying city at the edge of the Atlantic, which makes it extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels, coastal flooding and storm surges. Sea Hurricane Sandy for an example. And new research has even revealed that Atlantic Ocean currents might drastically change in the next few decades. A collapse of these currents would alter global weather. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy kicked up record-breaking waves which washed over parts of the city. 2 million people lost power, all the subways to Manhattan were flooded, and six hospitals were forced to shut down. It was a dark moment for the city. But how much worse might it be a few decades from now when the sea level is higher and another storm like Sandy? Drives the southern end of Manhattan Island, including the Wall Street Stock Exchange, will be especially vulnerable to surges from New York Harbor. According to one study, almost half the buildings in Lower Manhattan will be at risk of storm surge by 21120% of the area. Streets could face daily flooding as a result of rising sea levels. Funny enough, lower Manhattan is in the exact same spot where the first Europeans established New York back in the days of Thomas Duncan Wall Street. Is actually named after, you guessed it, a wall that used to run across the top of the settlement. Now, if this part of the city was taken out of action by future flooding, it would have a devastating effect not just on New York, but potentially the entire world economy. Wall Street is the home of the largest and most prolific Stock Exchange on the planet. Major flooding there could lead to short-term chaos. Of course, they could relocate, but they'd have to be prepared as well. So where does new Manhattan? Fit into all of this? According to Barr, that expanded land to the South of Manhattan would act kind of like a buffer and push currently vulnerable places further inland. Wall Street wouldn't be on the front line anymore. Instead, it would be tucked away. Of course, new Mannahatta would find itself sitting on the frontline of climate change instead. But unlike the rest of Manhattan Island, this new piece of land could be specifically designed to cope with the problem at hand. For example, it would be built at a higher elevation. Then the rest of lower Manhattan. Bart didn't say how high exactly, but the number we've seen from some other sources is 4 meters, just about enough space to comfortably handle any rising sea levels. New Mannahatta would also be built with other protections against rising sea levels, like some wetland economies along the newly constructed coastline. These would help to absorb any storm surges. Research has shown that even a simple salt marsh can make a massive difference by dampening the power of waves. Most of Lower Manhattan is directly exposed to the open water without so much as a tree to protect it. But New Manhattan would have a much more robust defense against the elements. In other words, this extension would kind of function like a giant storm wall. A giant stormwall with homes on top for 1/4 of a million people. When you put it like that, this project actually does sound like a pretty great idea, right? But actually, not everyone agrees with that. When Barr shared all of this in the New York Times, it didn't take long for people to. Point out the problems with new Mannahatta. A lot of commentators thought that the project was too big, too vague, too strange. And going to these critics, this isn't an actual plan. It's a pie in the sky idea. All style, no substance. Extensions like this one had been happening for centuries in countries all around the world. The official name for it is Land Reclamation, and the Netherlands in particular are experts at this. During the 20th century they added almost 2000 square kilometers to the country. When you compare that to the seven square. Kilometers of new Mannahatta, the project suddenly sounds a lot more feasible, more than double that amount from dredging projects all around the country. If some of that Phil was just sent to New York, dumped in the water and held in place by some solid sheep, it would take 15 years according to Barr. And that's just the land itself, by the way, not the buildings on top of it. So for being realistic, this is a plan that probably wouldn't be done in the next 30 years or so in terms of cost the land. And again, we're not talking about any buildings here would come in any predicted. $34 billion and of new Mannahatta costs around $34 billion to construct and the area of that land is 7 square kilometers, then the cost of that land is just under $5000 per square meter. If we then add the cost of buildings to that number and Bar reckons that those will cost $5000 per square meter as well, we're getting to a construction cost of $10,000 per square meter of New Manhattan real estate. And how much does real estate? Usually sell for on Manhattan Again, Bar provides some numbers here, about $15,000 per square meter. Essentially that means that whoever constructed New Mannahatta, whether that's the local government or a private company, could sell off the work for more than 30% more than it originally cost to build. To quote Bar again, Newman had to make sense because Manhattan sale prices are so much higher than the construction costs. When you put it like that, the project is sounding a little bit more convincing, right? But there's something important that we do need to point out here. As we said at the start, Jason Barr is a professor of economics. He's not an expert in construction. He's not an engineer, and he's never worked on a project like New Mannahatta. In other words, we have to treat all of the claims that he's making. All these facts and figures and costs and numbers doesn't mean that Barr is wrong about all of this. But it definitely feels as though this whole idea needs, like, a serious feasibility study. We don't know for sure how difficult it would be to New Mannahatta. Or how much the project would cost. We don't even know if the project would provide all the houses it's meant to or prove to be a practical defense against climate change. And there are other issues to think about, too. Last year, NASA performed a study on New York and found that parts of the city were slowly sinking under the weight of all those buildings. Which parts of the city, specifically? Well, mainly the areas on artificial land, where the ground is looser and more compressible. Midtown Manhattan, for example, is doing relatively fine. Because it's buildings are all sitting on bedrock, that means that newer constructions like Hudson Yards shouldn't be badly affected. But lower Manhattan on that artificial land is now sinking at a rate of 4mm per year. One researcher said that the ground is going down and the water's coming up. At some point, those two levels will meet. Studies like these make New Manhatta feel suddenly a lot less attractive. And so far we haven't even talked about the environmental impacts of the project. In that blog post we've mentioned a few times, Barr admitted that such a project will have environmental concerns. Scientific studies would need to take place in order to determine how New Manahata would impact currents and natural habitats in New York Harbor and beyond. One thing is for certain, in the coming years, New York needs a way to deal with rising sea levels and to find a solution for its bloated population. But whether or not New Mannahatta is the answer right now, it's honestly just too difficult. To say other solutions have been thrown around, like the Big You project, A10 mile ribbon of Parkland walls and movable floodgates at the southern end of Manhattan. Then there's the Climate Resilience Master Plan, which is a plan to elevate Manhattan coastlines and install some powerful anti flooding drainage systems. Projects like these are expected to cost less than $8 billion combined. They're certainly cheaper than new Mannahatta at the very least, but are they better than new? And a hat up again, we can't really answer that question right now.