Local, USA

Inundation District

By David Abel and Ted Blanco

In a time of rising seas and intensifying storms, one of the world’s wealthiest, most-educated cities made a fateful decision to spend billions of dollars erecting a new neighborhood along its coast - on landfill, at sea level. Unlike other places imperiled by climate change, this community of glass towers housing some of the largest, global companies was built well after scientists began warning of the threats, including many at its renowned universities. The city, which already has more high-tide flooding than nearly any other in the United States, named the new urban sector the Innovation District. But with ocean waters rising inexorably, and at an accelerating rate, others are calling it by a different name: INUNDATION DISTRICT.