This Luxury Tower Has Everything: Pools. A Juice Bar. And Flood Resilience.
Mr. Shaw is a member of the faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. At Monad Terrace, a new high-end development in Miami South Beach, luxury isnt just about uninterrupted views and a juice bar. The developers behind the 14-floor tower, designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning French firm Ateliers Jean Nouvel, its readiness to survive the oncoming impact of climate change. Monad Terrace is the first luxury condos Miami has seen be built above updated flood and sea level elevations, the marketing material claims. It is designed to reflect the light and water of its surroundings, while living in harmony with the time and place in which it rises. We have entered an era when fortification against sea-level rise is a core selling point, a luxury amenity alongside porte-cochere drop-offs, 116-foot swimming pools and hot tubs with views of Biscayne Bay. At first glance, this might seem like just common sense; some might even praise its nod to climate awareness. But Monad Terraces version of resiliency is limited. The building is simply lifted above the flood line (and the height of competing developments) to avoid sea-level rise. It does nothing to mitigate the impact beyond the property line and in fact, a flood-fortified tower in low-lying Miami Beach could make things worse for its neighbors by directing rising seawater into the already volatile water table. Taken further, the vision behind Monad Terraces strategy of resilience is dystopian: As water levels rise, what will happen to waterfront neighborhoods that cant afford similar defenses? What if in some distant future, flood-resilient housing is a luxury affordable only to the privileged few? Resilience defending current conditions as a response to climate change, rather than fully adapting to and anticipating it is a slippery concept, and in general it needs to be a part of any climate response. But on its own, it represents an outdated way of thinking, the idea that we can somehow stop or contain the forces of nature. It can also be exclusionary and unjust; if we can never stop or contain nature, we will just deflect it onto those who cannot afford to get out of the way. Instead, we should focus on equity-minded climate adaptation, on structural changes that will reimagine new urban futures under climate change. Effective adaptation will protect both the physical environment the social fabric of neighborhoods. The problem is that adaptation at scale requires collective action; resilience can mean simply leveraging power. Take, for example, , a Michigan businessman, Republican political donor and former U.S. ambassador to Italy, to secure funds to stop beach erosion along a stretch of Lake Michigan along which Mr. Secchia happens to own a $6 million summer home. When at first his request failed to get a response, he wrote to lawmakers: This lack of concern mystifies me. Our property values will diminish greatly adding, as if to say the quiet part out loud, hence, our donations will also diminish. In like Pacifica, just south of San Francisco, sea walls are going up to fortify individual homes to protect from coastal erosion. But they come with a cost, disrupting tide patterns and erasing publicly accessible beaches. The plan is controversial, and it has spurred a debate about whether managed retreat moving inland would be a more socially and economically viable solution. Needless to say, many opponents of managed retreat stand to benefit from the resilient sea walls. If single homes in Pacifica raise big questions about what to save and how, imagine the difficult decisions when large, dense cities are forced to triage usable land and limited relocation resources. Or will cities simply wall off financial districts and wealthy neighborhoods, in the name of protecting jobs and the tax base? Could Manhattan below 14th Street, for instance, be turned into one giant Monad Terrace? And even if we could do resilience equitably, it comes at an enormous cost both in dollars and in the opportunity to pursue alternative strategies. Can we buy our way out of the dire situation posed by climate change? This cynical co-optation can be used to assert economic control over how neighborhoods are built. Like all progressive ideas, resilience rhetoric can be used as a smokescreen to further economic interests that disproportionately affect vulnerable communities, such as minorities, older people and the working class. In fact, Americas entire disaster-response strategy is designed to push back against nature, rather than adapt to it. Federal aid, like the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, aims at rather than preparedness to weather future storms, further entrenching the status quo and preventing adaptation at the structural or ecological level. It doesnt have to be this way. Adapting to climate change, rather than resisting it, is a more equitable, sustainable and affordable long-term strategy. But doing so means rethinking and revaluing the urban landscape. For instance, along Miamis , landscape architects, led by the firms Local Office Landscape and Urban Design, and Cooper Robertson, designed an adaptable street using a permeable paving surface and structural soils to connect the roots of street trees. That way, when it rains, water can flow into the ground rather than flooding into homes and businesses. During Hurricane Irma, in 2017, it successfully drained a remarkable eight inches of rainfall an hour. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a team led by the firm SCAPE has proposed an extensive redesign of the , returning section of drained land to wetlands and estuaries, and elevating roadways to make way for frequent flooding. And in the New Jersey , the Regional Plan Association has proposed moving away from decades of efforts to contain the expanding wetlands by turning it into a new model of national park that grows as the climate continues to change. All of these plans incorporate elements of resilience; none of them considers abandoning neighborhoods or cities altogether. But they recognize that fortification alone is a dead end, and that true resilience that leads to adaptation will require us to give up any notion of maintaining the status quo. The real challenge comes not from the environment but from wealth-vested interests, both public and private, that use the language of resilience to fortify themselves at the expense of lower-income and vulnerable populations. Rather than systemic change and a path toward cities and communities adapted for new climate realities, we risk building a green-washed version of what is already not working: a built environment that is both environmentally and socially unjust. Matt Shaw ( ) is a member of the faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a former executive editor of The Architects Newspaper.