Superstorm Sandy, Two Years Later

News & Events | October 29th 2014

Two years ago, Superstorm Sandy made landfall on New York City and exposed the unique challenges of storm-proofing dense, urban, coastal cities. Since then, the NYU Furman Center has been helping to unpack the impacts of the storm on the city’s housing and residents, while investigating strategies and policies to help make the city’s housing stock more resilient against future climate threats.

Studying Sandy’s Effects 
Just days after Superstorm Sandy made landfall, the NYU Furman Center began researching the effects of the disaster on housing and communities across the New York City metro area. In March 2013, we released Sandy’s Effects on Housing in New York City, and followed with The Impacts of Hurricane Sandy on the Tri-State Area, a report conducted in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners. 

Our research found that 85% of buildings in the storm surge area in New York City were residential; one-to four-family homes made up the largest share of residences in the storm surge area. Further, low-income renters were disproportionately impacted by the storm surge; nearly half of all units impacted by Superstorm Sandy were low-income, subsidized, rent-stabilized, or Mitchell-Lama housing.

Convening the Experts 
In January of 2014, the NYU Furman Center, in collaboration with Enterprise Community Partners and the American Institute of Architects New York, convened more than 60 architects, engineers, building operators, city officials, and FEMA representatives for the Retrofit Solutions Workshop. Building on the findings of the 2013 housing reports, the workshop aimed to identify cost-effective solutions to make multifamily buildings more resilient. The creative ideas and recommendations developed at the workshop were showcased at a special exhibit at the Center for Architecture in the summer of 2014. 

Visualizing the Impact 
On the one-year anniversary of Sandy, the NYU Furman Center produced a series of Gridlines to visualize the storm's impact on communities and housing throughout New York City. The graphics highlight the types of buildings hit by the storm surge, as well as the impact of Sandy on New York City’s seniors and low-income population

 

Building Resilience Against Future Climate Threats
The NYU Furman Center’s most recent report, The Price of Resilience, looks ahead at the challenges and costs of building resilience against future climate threats in the city’s multifamily housing stock. Released in July of 2014, the report details design solutions and offers policy recommendations for city officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that may help remove barriers to achieving long-term resilience in this stock. The project was conducted in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

 

Moving forward, the NYU Furman Center plans to continue its work on strategies to enhance the resilience of dense, urban areas with multifamily housing.

« Previous | The Stoop | Next »