Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 1, Episode 12 /May 23, 2024
Why the Waterfront Alliance's CEO says we cannot wall ourselves off from the water
Cortney Koenig Worrall, Waterfront Alliance
May 23, 2024 /Real Estate, Cities & Housing
Why the Waterfront Alliance's CEO says we cannot wall ourselves off from the water
Cortney Koenig Worrall is the president and CEO of the Waterfront Alliance, a New York organization that works on climate resilience and access along the region's waterways. She began her career in stormwater engineering consulting after the Clean Water Act expanded in the early 1990s. She is worth hearing because the Alliance runs WEDG, a verification standard for projects where water meets land, and she speaks plainly to building owners about what is coming.
Cortney Koenig Worrall, President & CEO, Waterfront Alliance
In this conversation
Where Cortney tells a building owner to start: what the code requires today, and what regulation will require later.
The newly remodeled lower Manhattan subway station that Hurricane Sandy filled with saltwater, and why individual action is not enough.
How offshore wind in New York and New Jersey can ease the carbon burden on individual buildings.
WEDG, the Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines, and the projects that have met it.
Her picture of New York in 50 years: green roofs, parks built on top of flood walls, and some neighborhoods that do not come back.
If we were to stop emitting all carbon dioxide and methane today, the planet will still keep warming up because of these historic emissions.
Cortney Koenig Worrall
Chapters
A career that kept coming back to water
From northern Wisconsin woods to stormwater regulation.
Where a building owner should start
Know the code, go beyond it, and expect impacts to accelerate.
Sandy and the case for system change
Decarbonization and resilience as the two levers that matter most.
Policy that is working
The infrastructure bill, state climate plans and offshore wind.
Designing the water's edge
How WEDG verifies resilience, ecology and public access.
Paying for it, and the next 50 years
Insurance, finance and what a resilient city will look like.
By the numbers
Saved for every $1 spent on federal natural hazard mitigation grants
Cortney says money put into resilience pays back over time. The National Institute of Building Sciences found federal mitigation grants return about six dollars for each dollar spent.
Source: National Institute of Building Sciences, Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves (2019) ↗Preventing climate change and preparing for climate change need to go hand in hand.
Cortney Koenig Worrall
Takeaways
Plan for two things at once: cutting emissions and preparing for storms, sea level rise, river swings and extreme heat and cold. Stopping emissions today would not stop the warming already locked in.
At the water's edge, move buildings back or raise them, lift critical equipment, and design the edge to support ecology and public access rather than a bare wall.
Resilience spending is hard to see, so use a third-party standard like WEDG to make it visible, and push insurers and lenders to price in long-term protection.
Even though water is where so much stuff is going to change and happen, we cannot wall ourselves off from it.
Cortney Koenig Worrall