After Sandy, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg differed on their preferred infrastructure responses, with Cuomo favoring a storm barrier to protect the entire estuary, and Bloomberg localized protection for Lower Manhattan inspired by Battery Park City. Several studies have been commissioned since, including the BIG U from Bjarke Ingels Group for a semi-circle of berms that would allow small-scale controlled floods,[2] in contrast with the more ambitious seawall proposals.[3] Their 2014 plan largely involved constructing a series of berms in Lower Manhattan, inland from the shoreline.[4][5][6] but has been deemed inadequate in parts and too costly to maintain.
Bloomberg's 2013 concept of "Seaport City"[9] has been replaced by the FiDi-Seaport plan,[10] as part of the wider LMCR initiative by the De Blasio administration. It updates the BIG U with more substantial land reclamation that could be funded and finished, avoiding the occasional temporary flooding of the earlier plan and its maintenance costs.[11][12] Initial plans focus on landfilling and building up East River Park.[13][14]
