MAYOR OF SEOUL JOINS BIG NYC FOR A TOUR OF THE EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY PROJECT

The Mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, joined the BIG NYC team, including Partner Daniel Sundlin and Associate Jeremy Siegel, for a tour of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, part of the broader BIG U initiative. The 2.5-mile project area is located within the FEMA 100-year floodplain and spans from Montgomery Street to East 25th Street. The project is designed to reduce risk and improve the resiliency of more than 110,000 New Yorkers as well as critical infrastructure including schools, libraries and an electrical substation that powers much of Lower Manhattan. This was the second time that BIG had the honor of hosting Mayor Oh Se-hoon, as he visited the BIG HQ in Copenhagen and toured several project sites there in March 2023.

As BIG’s proposal for Rebuild by Design – an initiative by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that called for innovative design solutions to increase resiliency of Sandy-impacted communities – the BIG U is a protective system running around Manhattan from West 57th Street south to The Battery and up to East 40th Street: 10 continuous miles of low-lying geography that comprise an incredibly dense, vibrant and vulnerable urban area. The multivalent ‘U’ consists of multiple but linked design opportunities, each on different scales of time, size and investment, with each local neighborhood tailoring its own set of programs, functions and opportunities.