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How NY Is Changing Building Codes to Be More Flood Resistant
NYC Building codes are transitioning into resilient designs to stave off the potential of water erosion, either as an effect of climate change or as a result of poor infrastructure maintenance generally. To accomplish this, legal codes, especially those relating to zoning laws, will have to be recontextualized or modified. Fact of the matter is, many buildings in New York are quite old. Often, even when substantial renovations are made to the facade of a building, or to apartments, the underlying infrastructure remains the same. This patchwork approach to design works to the extent that new environmental factors are not thrown into the mix. An increased presence of water, however, is not something most buildings were designed to withstand.
Image: N. Y. C. Planning (2020)
Elevation is the key ingredient in this. New York is gradually moving towards designing buildings that have only limited use of ground floors. Certainly after Hurricane Sandy, where inundations ``extended beyond the current FEMA-designated flood zone and above its flood elevations' ' (12), it became more and more apparent that newer buildings ultimately suffered less flood damage than older ones. This is partially a matter of spatial distribution, and how it ties in with the functionality of older buildings as opposed to new ones. The phenomena of the ground floor apartment itself could be said to be a fading relic, as many new buildings opt to have apartments start at the first floor, leaving lower level for staff and maintenance.
Zoning Laws and Flood Resistant Designs
Moving mechanical systems to the roofs of buildings (rather than the basement or ground floor) is another way to avoid structural damages in the event of long term flooding. Again, new buildings tend to already have these kinds of structures in place—or at least one can move mechanical systems to the roof more easily with new buildings as opposed to old ones. The reason for this relates to technological developments as much as zoning laws. Older buildings were designed with different infrastructural precedents in mind. In newer buildings, and buildings which will be built and zoned in the future, one has to bear in mind "unprecedented" phenomena like the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy—especially as water elevation seems inevitable.
In light of all this, zoning requirements regarding the height of buildings might need to be revised. To ensure that older buildings can become resistant to severe flooding, they might require the construction of an additional story—one that would house essential machinery and tech. Infrastructural concerns regarding older buildings don't simply involve potential damage to the physical structure of the building, but also encompass how the residents of a building might communicate with the outer world should flooding on the scale of hurricane sandy happen again. Older buildings could be rezoned to allow essential cables to pass through their newly constructed top floor, which would safeguard against communication blackout.
Image: N. Y. C. Planning (2020)
Another ordinance that needs to be considered is below ground parking. To minimize the potential dangers of severe flooding, future buildings might not be zoned to include underground. Not only does this create a potential hazard for technologies such as cars, elevators, and essential cables composing these, but it also poses a threat to people. If a below ground parking lot becomes flooded, the kind of structural damage that ensues could endanger residents in upper levels. Additionally, the prospect of property damage—which either the city of New York or the building's property owners would be liable for—should be avoided at any cost. By eliminating below ground parking, both loss of life and litigation is sidestepped.
Accessing Public and Private Space
So far we've discussed zoning laws and restructuration as something that affects the residents of buildings; but there's also a point where the structures of future residential sites become public spaces. At bottom, it's on the ground of public space (walkways, streets, parks, etc.) that private space (housing, offices, stores) can come into existence. It follows, then, that in terms of safeguarding residential buildings against severe flooding, something must also be done to safeguard public spaces. To my mind, stairs and ramps are the links that cross over into public and private space, while also ensuring that the entrances to buildings are not threatened by floods or rising water levels.
While zoning laws may allow a reduction of rear yards in order to have room to build stairs (or ramps), these ultimately serve as a point of transfer between public and private space. Not only the lives of people who live in the buildings affected by these laws, but the very landscape of the city changes when ramps or stairs are introduced to decrease flooding risks. Reduced -- trimmed to allow stairs or ramps -- means that private life, in some sense, truncated by the public interests. Similarly, to introduce sweeping zoning reform and suddenly, as though overnight, to see stairs and ramps everywhere would frame the public experience of the city differently. Always a waterfront city, these new appendages to buildings would demonstrate that the city was imperiled by water.
Image: N. Y. C. Planning (2020)
Developing for a Coastal City
A more gradual insertion of stairs and ramps could be complemented by new constructions that emphasize raised homes and raised yards. While this would not instill a sense of emergency in the general pedestrian, it would nonetheless honor the reality of New York as a waterfront city. Not only would these designs safeguard against floods and rising waters, they would add to the sphere of public life the fact that the city is continuous with water. Today, by contrast, too many buildings seem constructed to deny the fact of New York's proximity to water: they shield from the wind, the cold. It's as though buildings are designed to isolate residents from the water.
The fact that new buildings are more flood resistant than older ones might seem almost incidental. But there's a cost incentive inherent in how a building is constructed, along with an acculturated meaning expressed by zoning laws. So-called "brutalist" buildings are generally cheap to efficiently produce; at the same time, these buildings are wrought with flood resistant materials, such as concrete. More can be done along these lines. To date, several beach cities have already done something similar. But in a city like New York, where public and private space already so intricately interweaves, the use of flood resistant materials to make elevated building would spell out a greater interdependence between public and private life, where private residences take into consideration their connectedness with the public sphere, and, ultimately, the sea.
Sources:
N. Y. C. Planning (2020). COASTAL CLIMATE RESILIENCE: Designing for Flood Risk. …..Department of City Planning. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from …..https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans-studies/sustainable-communities/…..climate-resilience/designing_flood_risk.pdf
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