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Comment by ausbah | Hacker News Reader

what should be done for cities like new orleans as sea levels continue to rise? trying to save them feels like a losing, expensive battle - but "moving a whole city" feels even harder

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Whenever property is completely destroyed in a floodplain they could offer say a 5% bonus to their insurance payment from the government if they give up rights to that property and no longer use it for housing or business, alternatively they could rebuilt the structure on pylons, propping it up above the flood levels. And if they decide to rebuild despite that offer, you could remove all eligibility from the subsidized cost of government-backed flood insurance, and instead let them take on the full cost of private insurance flood coverage rates.

There is proper technology for places below sea level. We should learn from the Netherlands - they're masters of reclaiming land from the ocean.

Perhaps they can teach us how they drove off the hurricanes.

Its called stop building paper/wooden panel houses.

>"moving a whole city" feels even harder

Could do it for Chicago around the 1850's; 'Raising of Chicago' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

Providing relocation assistance to incentivize people to go elsewhere piecemeal, rather than trying to move them all to one place together?

And like Miami, NYC etc. in the coming years.

NYC can probably afford to protect itself without federal funding

And they really should, but on the other hand, as a population they pay enough in taxes to the federal government that it's not ridiculous for them to ask for some federal assistance with something like that.

(it's also not ridiculous for a major cultural landmark like New Orleans, but that's a more complicated argument)

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