djfourmoney wrote: As the water level gets higher, New Orleans and similar cities will be facing a decision to become extinct or move to the floating city platform.
I think the first thing will be the de-rust belting of existing in-land cities. For instance, coastal metro Boston is highly prosperous, however, both Worcester and Springfield MA are in this sort of rust belt pattern of decaying former industries and lack of interested investors in re-developing the urban areas. The same goes for much of upstate NY, from Albany to Buffalo.
I can very easily see a lot of MA businesses and residents, re-settling the Worcester to Springfield areas (along with Nashua NH to the north), if Boston becomes a marshland. It's certainly a lot cheaper to re-vamp aging cities than it is in creating a floating oil rig, supped up to become a new city.
The fact that neither Manhattan nor New Orleans were prepared for either natural or man-made disaster is a function of hubris and lack of foresight. Pretty much, NYC data centers, switching hubs, etc needed to have their fail-over strategy to incorporate areas like Denver, Chicago, and Houston over the Jersey suburbs. And New Orlean residents really need to leave a city, below sea level. It's not like it's got ancient historic features like Venice to preserve for posterity sakes. The French Quarter could easily be built out in just about any US city, if Cajuns parties are interested.
