Brooklyn Bridge – Montgomery Coastal Resilience (BMCR) will protect residents, businesses, and infrastructure in Manhattan’s Two Bridges neighborhood from flooding due to coastal storms and sea level rise. New York City, like many other cities around the world, is facing the complex reality of climate change and its severe impacts on the urban environment. While working towards long-term adaptation strategies, coastal cities need immediate protection measures that will buffer them against flood risk from both catastrophic storm surge and more frequent, low-level inundation events exacerbated by sea level rise.
Two Bridges is a diverse neighborhood with a high proportion of elderly and low-income residents especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This design-driven infrastructure project negotiates the challenge of providing flood protection while preserving views and access along 1.3 kilometers of public urban waterfront with an innovative system of deployable flood gates. Implementing flood protection is a necessity for this community, but simultaneously preserving view corridors, waterfront access, and public open space was a primary design challenge – one that many cities face.
In Lower Manhattan’s dense urban environment, access to open space and opportunities for exercise and recreation is critical to community health and well-being. Flip-up flood gates already exist in New York City and elsewhere around the world, but in implementing a system that consists primarily of deployable flood gates along more than a kilometer of coastline, the City is taking bold and unprecedented action to ensure that climate adaptation does not sacrifice public space. Designed with input collected over four years of community engagement, the project includes basketball, playgrounds, fitness areas, climbing structures, seating, glider swings, and a performance area. Unprecedented in New York City, the BMCR project establishes a high standard for integrating resiliency measures with human-centered placemaking by protecting thousands of residents, including many living in affordable housing, while continuing to promote access to waterfront open space.
Client
NYC Economic Development Corporation
Services
- Flood mitigation system design
- Landscape architecture
- Project management
- Coastal modeling
- Deep foundation and seepage barrier design
- Water main design
- FEMA certification
- Drainage modeling and system design
- Coordination of cost estimating and specifications
- Community engagement
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Environmental assessment
- Waterfront certification application management
- Traffic analysis
- Noise and vibration analysis
