New New York begins construction rather inconspicuously, responding to the inevitable threat of near-term climate change. Widely documented and accepted climate science indicates that Sea Level could rise as much as 6 feet in New York by 2100. That amount of rise would threaten many areas of New York City's coastlines, none more perhaps than Long Island City in Queens within the next 80 Years.

It seems unlikely that the city or any private entities will build anything up to the level needed in the near term to radically combat this threat that still seems so far away. This means that it will initially be individual landowners who bear the brunt of the degrading environment. Garden-level apartments, often a reliable source of income for small landlords and a staple among the New York City housing typologies, will be the most at risk from early-stage flooding. Eventually, those units, already plagued with rats and cockroaches, will become uninhabitable. But where will the people go? How will the landlords make their mortgage payments in a city where the cost of living is growing much faster than the median income if they lose rentable units? The answer at first may be small and seem insignificant, but many will turn to expand their buildings upwards, adding one or two floors to hopefully regain some of the space lost on the ground floor. Landlords will turn to a New York staple—the stoop, as a way to enter buildings, previously on grade, to the second floor as flooding gets more serious.

The next stage in the development of New New York will be to address the seriously degraded and now unreliable network of infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, sewage pipes, subways, fiber optic cables) affected by climate change. When rising sea levels begin to engulf the region, it will no longer make sense to maintain roads and infrastructure on the street level. At this point, the city will be in a terrible crisis. How do we supply potable water to houses living in a swamp? Are we just going to assume that the city will demolish everything via eminent domain as they did with Central Park, turning valuable real estate into a wetland? Hopefully, public policy will catch up to the reality of the dire sea-level situation, which threatens the coastal neighborhoods. New roads and pathways will need to be erected to carry the infrastructure to buildings. While it may take a considerable investment, there are few alternatives to maintaining the existing city without developing new connections. This new infrastructure will be overbuilt, high above the ground, so as to never be threatened by the continuously rising sea level. Utilities and other infrastructure will connect to this new street from the top floor instead of through the cellar, which, at this point, will have been lost to flooding. The buildings will flip and become walk-downs—not walk-ups.

Continually evolving, the city has entered into a new era. With the climate crises of the 21st century all but in the rear view, the urban environment must come to terms with the next emerging crisis—a housing shortage of epic proportions. The city has naturally transformed again into the ideal location for many. Gas and lawn taxes enacted to mitigate the climate crisis are sparking a mass exodus of suburbia, drawing people back to the city, where they seek lower expenses, better public transportation, and can live within a more sustainable ecological footprint. Amidst this resurgence, the city comes to recognize that the townhouse building stock of the boroughs is insufficient alone to cater to the rapidly rising population.

In an effort to spur new developments, unprecedented steps to redefine 'air rights' are introduced so that new buildings may be built above the old, utilizing the new elevated infrastructure. To preserve the charm and characteristics of the existing buildings and their newly expanded terraces, new developments must be elevated at least 50' over the existing buildings. Akin to the accelerated redevelopment of Chelsea circa 2020, this new infrastructure will attract developers to compete in an amenities race, offing lots of programs to attract tenants. The architectural vision of 'City in a Tower' is realized in this phase. Everything from hospitals to schools, casinos, restaurants, theaters, and museums are introduced, all within short walking distance. This new layer of development once again set's the city as the place to be.

Amidst the density spike of New New York, history begins to repeat itself. While the government and developers aimed to project the city into the future, they failed to recognize the inevitable issues with such a dense urban environment. New New York has a long history of battling with disease, overcrowding, and an astronomical cost of living. In 1855, a vast swath of the urban fabric was cleared to combat a worsening urban condition, creating Central Park, the crown jewel of Manhattan. In 2020, New York saw an exodus of those who no longer could justify the high costs just to remain cooped up in tiny apartments.

New diseases begin to riddle these dense communities of 2170, and many residents are contemplating if the city is worth it anymore. While they have their 'amenities,' everything comes with a cost, and what anybody failed to recognize in the last 150 years of development is the value of communal public space. As the ground slipped into the sea, the city unknowingly lost its most prized assets—the parks, the plazas, and the open spaces; a reprieve from the mundane indoor environments. There is no unprogrammed space for farmers' markets, protests, street vendors, or chess clubs, as everything was privatized during the years of densification. In an attempt to fill this void, the city utilizes the last remaining slivers of space to erect monumental parks and plazas in the sky, offering the long-lost public space to the people once again; in this, a new typology is born. Dancing between lush and aired biomes, open-air and controlled, environments to wander aimlessly, practice Tai Chi, or to shoot some b-ball: the towerʼs parks have it all.

The richness of the city—its diversity—depends on its ability to respond, expand and adapt with the culture of its people. Project into the future and foster an environment that is just as spontaneous, free to adapt and react with the people that make it the unique, charming, wild, untamed, uncensored, and authentic enigma that it is today.