[barry-cotter]

If your city is built on a sponge and in the flattest state to boot your solutions look like seasteading, not dams and pumps. From an engineering point of view Miami should be looking to Venice, not Amsterdam. You can’t save Florida land by pumping so the only way to go is to make your own taller land or to build what amount to boats or oil rigs.

[ethbro]

This is what annoyed me a bit about the article. Sea level rise doesn't seem like that much of a problem.

If the foundations will still be tenable, and the buildings are built appropriately (e.g. parking garage for first level), they're going to be there.

For older ones? Hell, Americans were lifting entire buildings 6' in the 1850s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

Miami already has canals, so swapping transportation from roads to waterways isn't a huge leap. Where you really need a road, loft it up above the water. Roads are probably the lightest / easiest thing to lift.

That said... the real killer of the city is likely to be drinking water access. Groundwater in porous limestone means saltwater infiltration doesn't just flood, it mixes with freshwater.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-29/miami-s-o...

Reconfiguring height is a one-time problem. Desalination of all your drinking water is a much more expensive problem.

[kaitai]

Adding some fun science: pumps are particularly unsuited to FL because of the "sponge" that makes up its land. As freshwater is taken up from the soil for human use, saltwater slowly follows it in (contaminating Fl's freshwater source). If there's a mismatch in the rate of percolation, you can get sinkholes -- the land collapses because there isn't water in the cracks holding it up. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-behind...

[HillaryBriss]

this also happened in Orange County, California years ago. they'd pumped so much groundwater that some of the wells near the shore saw saltwater infiltration. nowadays, Orange County replenishes its existing aquifer by pumping purified, recycled waste water back in.

[opportune]

I don't think seasteading would be an easy sell in an area susceptible to powerful hurricanes. Though, I do think seasteading is an underrated idea. I think the best place in the US for it is the western part of the SF peninsula

[jniedrauer]

> From an engineering point of view Miami should be looking to Venice

I might consider moving to Miami if this ever happens...

[ianai]

Who’s going to pay for that retrofit?

[maehwasu]

If the problem looks imminent, as opposed to "we'll deal with it in 50 years", you will suddenly have a lot of VERY incentivized landowners to contribute money.

Is this the ideal way to do things? F* no. Is it what's likely to happen? Yeah.