NEW YORK CITY — Central Shark, Wet Village and the Upper East Tide.
These are some of the reimagined names for New York City neighborhoods on a new map of what the city might look like if the sea were to rise 100 feet.
Urban planner Jeffrey Linn plotted out what New York City might look like in anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 years, when some scientists say climate change could drive sea levels to rise that high. In Linn's dramatic map, almost the entire city is awash with ocean tides except for a few sparse splotches of land.
Over the past year Linn, who has a background in geography, has mapped out eleven cities including New York as a study in extreme sea level rise. He's working on eight more. He said he first started the maps as a "thought experiment."
"I'm just fascinated by the land forms: the bays, the islands and peninsulas and things that emerge," Linn said. "It actually can teach us a lot about the shape of the cities that we live in right now."
Linn admits that his maps, with playful, water-themed nicknames, poke fun at something that's pretty dark for the future of the city and the planet.
'[It's like] whistling past a graveyard," he said of the map, which turns Midtown Manhattan into "Middrown."
"It is kind of horrifying and I tried to lighten it up. It gets people's attention more if you can be humorous about it."
While Linn's map is extreme, a recent report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change, warned that the city faces the very real threat of a six foot rise in sea levels by the year 2100.
"If these extreme scenarios can get people’s attention and maybe get people to start thinking about it a little more, then that’s a great thing,” Linn said.
