I took a graph of a map of Manhattan and of the greater New York region and U.S. Geological survey’s print then looked at the streets and the contour levels and I simply marked the 50-foot intervals to see what kind of an island was left, what kind of a bay. And then I walked around town with a tourist-map version of that that I had altered so that I could have a smaller version of that. I wandered around and I looked at the terrain and I looked at the streets running from like Fifth and Sixth avenues between the Empire State Building and say 20th — there’s a 10-foot drop there that would [in a 50-foot sea-level rise] be the tidal zone that is actually several blocks of the wetland at low tide, but underwater at high tide. Even though it would be the shallows with waves breaking.
That actually sounds incredibly fun. Taking pictures and photoshopping in water at the appropriate levels would be pretty cool too.
I have to say, not having been to New York and having nothing on the line, that actually does sound like an incredibly cool setting.