How Boston is rethinking its relationship with the sea

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Clarendon Street as it is today


Clarendon Street with added canal

Two years ago, when the still vicious tail-end of Hurricane Sandy slammed into Boston, it was luck rather than planning that saved the city's streets from deep floods.

If it had hit four hours earlier, during the full-moon high tide, it is likely a storm surge would have inundated the city, submerging its low-lying areas under several feet of water.

The narrow escape concentrated minds, because there's another problem threatening to overwhelm the city's flood defences - climate scientists are predicting a sea-level rise on the US east coast of up to six feet (2m) by the end of the century.

On top of this, Boston has seen an increase in rain and snow over the past few decades and has to contend with the fact that the whole of the US East Coast is sinking as the West Coast around the San Andreas Fault rises.

This is why Boston's city planners and architects are contemplating the radical idea of turning its most historic district - the elegant 19th Century terraced houses of the Back Bay - into a network of canals.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29761274