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Can Boston out-Canute the tides as sea levels keep rising?

The Washington Post, which has lots of ex-Bostonian staffers these days, takes a long look at what Boston's trying to do to stave off rising sea levels now that we've apparently rejected plans to build a giant dam around the harbor. Naturally, while Seaport buildings lay in "aqua fences" to keep themselves dry, "there are no sea walls where most of Boston’s poorest residents live," although it does note the city's planning for a new seawall along Day Boulevard and a re-do of Moakley Park to turn it into a giant sponge during really high tides.

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Comments

I'm not sure I understand this bit

although it does not the city's planning for a new seawall along Day Boulevard and a re-do of Moakley Park to turn it into a giant sponge during really high tide

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Slight typo, s/b "it does note" vs "it does not"

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From the flooding maps I've seen, those folks are probably fine. That is until they are displaced by folks moving out of Southie, Charlestown, etc...

http://boston.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=7a599ab2ebad43d...

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Ahem.

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Oh, you didn't know it was getting rapidly gentrified?

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One of the city's larger public-housing developments.

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The point of the Canute story is that he wanted to chastise his over-flattering courtiers, not that he could stop the tide.

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Canute was pointing to the futility of holding back the tides as a metaphor; can Boston, in effect out-do him and, if not actually hold back the tides, at least survive them?

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I keep getting a UHub "Page not found
Sorry! Try the search box in the upper right." when I click it.

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Link actually works now.

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It is not there anymore.

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Not all of Boston has given up on plans to build a dam (i.e. sea wall) around Boston... www.nichiusa.org

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Not only is it useless, but it will be outdated by the time it is built and funnel water into other communities.

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housing! in the low laying areas!

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We need more luxury housing in low lying areas!

/s

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I haven't read the article but it doesn't seem accurate to claim that rising sea waters will affect the "poorest" sections of Boston, as others have said. We know where the water is coming from (the "ocean") and the poorest sections are, my guess, Mattapan and a few sections of Dorchester. Every housing project is inland except ... in Charlestown maybe? Which won't flood unless suddenly the Mystic River changes direction.

EDIT: Not a bad article but too general to learn anything. They do point out that part of East Boston would flood, which I didn't know, although it sure looks more like Winthrop than Boston. Otherwise, it fails b/c it doesn't include maps of the low-lying areas so we don't know if it's true to say the poorest areas would flood.

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They were referring to East Boston (not all the buildings on the waterfront are luxury condos) and Old Colony, which is right across Moakley Park from the harbor.

Other vulnerable spots are Harbor Point and Charlestown, home to the city's largest public-housing project.

The city has a mapping system that lets you see which parts of the city could be most affected by flooding.

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Aren't the Bunker Hill projects getting re-built in the next few years through a public-private partnership? The construction would add a substantial number of "affordable" and market-rate units to make it viable for the developer.

If the re-built complex (with low, middle income + market rate units) doesn't include flooding protections, doesn't that contradict the point in the article? (ie. that it's not exclusively the poor who suffer?)

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Many decades ago, when you took a course to sell real estate in Massachusetts, it was quite frowned upon to scare poor people out of their neighborhood.

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... overtrick on Boston Globe message boards.

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You had many other options to keep poor people out of the neighborhood.

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