When Superstorm Sandy made landfall on October 29, 2012, it pushed 13 feet of storm surge into New York City's harbor, sweeping across the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts and wiping entire neighborhoods off the map in Staten Island. Flooding knocked out power in Lower Manhattan, plunging downtown into near-total darkness as water rushed through the streets. The storm caused $19 billion in damages in the city alone, and it was clear that future storms could be even worse unless something changed.
Less than a year later, the Obama administration unveiled a massive federal initiative to ensure that the city not only recovered from Sandy, but built back better. The initiative, dubbed Rebuild by Design, promised to funnel money toward long-term climate adaptation measures in the hardest-hit areas, supplementing the usual barrage of disaster aid with money earmarked for forward-looking projects.
