BY RACHEL DOVEY
The team led by SCAPE proposes breaching levees to allow trapped sediment out, creating a stronger network of marshes and mudflats that can cushion developed areas. Image courtesy SCAPE/Public Sediment team.
They?re no stranger to wildfires and drought, but the cities around the San Francisco Bay haven?t been hit with a climate change-fueled disaster on par with Hurricanes Sandy or Harvey?yet. Still, sea-level rise won?t spare the metros. Even if they escape the drowning predicted by certain apocalyptic maps, Bay Area residents rely on freeways and rail lines built on soft, low-lying bay fill?areas particularly vulnerable to flooding and erosion. And the region?s tidal marshes and mudflats, which should act as natural barriers, are slowly losing sediment owing to poorly engineered dams. ?Unlike New York City, the Bay Area has all these slower and more invisible problems related to climate change,? says Gena Wirth, ASLA, the design principal at SCAPE Landscape Architecture.
The Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge is bringing some of those unseen issues to light. Last year, judges selected 10 winning teams (SCAPE is the leader of one) made up of ecologists, designers, and landscape architects to imagine infrastructure that works with the region?s shifting landscape rather than against it. The challenge, which is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, among others, is modeled on New York?s post-Sandy Rebuild by Design contest, with one key difference: This on...