If anyone thought the Big Dig was a clusterfuck then they have seen nothing if this vision became a reality... the idea of turning the Back Bay into a series of canals... an area built on landfill and poorly documented about where infrastructure is located along with tons of historic residential architecture is going to cost many times more money. Not to mention the Back Bay neighborhood association, which is probably the most powerful neighborhood associations in the United States due to a combination of power and wealth would throw a nutty (and rightfully so).
IMO, the best option is to simply raise buildings following the Chicago model. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago. A major advantage being you don't need to worry about flood control measures failing. It's not like the buildings are actually worth all that much it's 90% pure land value with a token for the structure. (Aka move the same building to the middle of an Iowa cornfield and suddenly there not so valuable.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
'The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S. and was plagued by escalating costs, scheduling overruns, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests,[2][3] and one death.[4] The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998[5] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006).[6] However, the project was completed only in December 2007, at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006.[7] The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it will not be paid off until 2038.[8] As a result of the death, leaks, and other design flaws, the consortium that oversaw the project agreed to pay $407 million in restitution, and several smaller companies agreed to pay a combined sum of approximately $51 million.[9]'
Madrid buried its M30 high for far less money: http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/m30_madrid/ Note that the project included two contracts that included >4km highway tunnels, neither of which cost more than $1B USD.
There were differences, of course. But read up on American tunneling costs versus those in Asia or non-English-speaking Europe, if you want to better understand why we can't have nice things.
During the raising of Chicago, how did they get the jackscrews under the buildings in the first place? Especially those (presumably) positioned in the interiors (as opposed to edges) of the buildings?
The article just says that "architects, developers, real estate experts and business owners were brought together in May to discuss ways of preserving the city's buildings in this watery cityscape of the future".
Who set this up? Were canals a serious suggestion with a reasonable amount of support, or just thrown out as a possibility during a brainstorming-type exercise?
Today, while extant networks may remain quite decorative and interesting, urban canals seem unlikely to be used for any purpose other than high-end recreation / tourism, and the article does not address any way they'd be directly useful for flood control. It's not even made clear they'd really assist in keeping seawater out of peoples' homes and businesses.
Either way, the article failed to explain :)
(Fun fact: the word "gracht", Dutch / Nederlands for street-canal, uses the voiced velar fricative, a sound which English eschews. Good luck pronouncing it right. :b)
Even if Boston already had canals they would still need to build surrounding flood protection systems just like Venice and Amsterdam. So why build the canals?
Interior canals can actually make flooding more likely as New Orleans learned when breaks along canals were responsible for flooring the city after Katrina. The solution - as a everywhere else - was beefed up perimeter defenses not more canals. Canals just make the problem harder and the risks greater. Why build a system to deliver vast quantities of water to the center of a city?
The real problem with building reliable flood protection is that it is impossible to fully test and may not be tested by nature for a very long time. This requires sustained effort by level headed engineers and planners not politically motivated dreamers.
Canals can act as a buffer in case of heavy rainfall. This requires the canals not to be connected to open water. In anticipation of heavy rainfall you would pump water out of the canals, into open water (sea). The canals can then act as a temporary buffer for excess rainwater. True, this wouldn't help against dike-breaks.
Related to this: in Holland there are many farmlands in the proximity of rivers that are designated as buffers like these. When necessary, they let these farmlands run full of water in a controlled way to prevent downriver cities from flooding.
Not necessarily. The South Florida Water Management District canals ultimately drain directly into either the ocean or the Everglades. The canal network has a series of flood locks and pumps, though, which can be used to manipulate water levels and force water to flow faster or slower than it would naturally.
Municipal drainage along the coast in southern Florida is also connected directly to the ocean. In that case as well the drainage system is augmented by high-capacity pumps to force the water out of the system and into the ocean. The municipal green spaces act as the buffers if the pumps cannot keep up with the rainfall.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/29/venice-charle...
olympics bid when?
Anyway, the project finished in 2007 amid a huge housing boom in the US which significantly increased costs. A well managed project could have probably been ~30% cheaper, but the much of the "190%" over run was well outside the projects scope.
For comparison the hover dam is generally thought of as a well executed project despite ~98 directly related fatalities during construction. IMO, we have become vary critical of large construction projects in large part because rebuilding infrastructure is simply far more complex than clean slate construction in the middle of the wilderness, and even worse it negatively impacts peoples lives during construction. Especially in places like HN considering how few software projects are on time and under budget.
But read up on American tunneling costs
In many other countries the process is somewhat more legislative. A city proposes a metro line, and seeks the direct approval of higher levels of government: there are discussions, hearings, and then the plans are passed into law. Once the plan is law, then it's law: the legislature is presumed to have weighed the pros and cons and made the decision, so you can usually no longer challenge it on environmental grounds, noise-pollution grounds, or anything else, because that power is not delegated to agencies or courts.
In short: the U.S. both has a lot more layers of government (city, transit district, county, state, national), and delegates much more case-by-case decision-making power to administrative agencies and courts.
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/06/06/study-corrupt-states-s...
"According to research published in the journal Public Administration Review, states with higher levels of public corruption spend more money on highways and construction. The study found highway and construction projects and police programs provide the most opportunities for lawmakers to enrich themselves, according to Governing Magazine, and are positively correlated with state levels of corruption. Meanwhile, highly corrupt states also spend relatively less on health, education, and welfare — categories that were less susceptible to graft and bribery, the report found."