Washed away

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is in the process of revising flood maps and construction recommendations for the Jersey City-Hoboken region – and city planners and local officials don’t like what they see.

According to a FEMA spokesman, these flood maps and building advisories were already in the works prior to Hurricane Sandy, which devastated Hudson County and parts of New York last fall, but were released in draft form early so that cities in the area can begin to protect themselves from similar storms in the future.

These maps and guidelines have yet to be finalized and adopted by the agency. If approved in their current draft, city planners and local officials say they will radically change the urban landscape in a way that could hurt commerce and alienate customers.

“There’s a real problem that we’re going to be confronted with [regarding] these new maps,” said Director of Jersey City Planning Robert Cotter.

“Depending on the area, the new regs are now saying you have to build…seven or eight feet up in the air,” said Cotter. “What it does is, it really challenges the retail space, because there’s a lack of communication with pedestrians down below [on the sidewalk]. In SoHo, where there’re the old warehouses, every one of those buildings that has a loading dock on the ground level and commercial space three or four feet above the sidewalk, you’ll see that none of those spaces is retail.”

For retail-oriented businesses to be successful, he said, they need to be on the ground level. In recent years, a number of Jersey City developments have been built with retail space planned for the ground floor, and residential units situated above the retail.

Forcing architects and developers to elevate the lowest floors, Cotter said, means retail space would be lifted off the ground, out of reach for pedestrians and customers.

“If you’re selling a sweater or a pair of shoes, you have to be at [ground] level. The customer has to be able to see the store, look at the merchandise through a glass window, and walk in. Psychologically, customers won’t take the trip up a flight of stairs.”

The new recommendations – which FEMA spokesman Darrel Habisch emphasized are not requirements – wouldn’t affect any development that has already been completed, any development that has already broken ground, or any project that has already received its building permits. But the recommendations will likely impact projects that are currently in their planning stages.

Habisch pointed out, however, that new buildings that don’t comply with the new FEMA standards won’t be eligible for federal flood insurance in the wake of a damaging weather event.

Zimmer has recommended a controversial plan to build a system of federally-funded flood walls around Hoboken to protect the Mile Square City from another devastating storm like Sandy. Since she first made this recommendation several weeks ago in her State of the City address, Zimmer’s proposal has been criticized.

“Floodgates do their job, up to a point. But there’s no way of predicting what the next storm is going to bring,” said Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan. “Let’s say you build a 12-foot wall around Staten Island. That can potentially keep the water out – unless the surge is higher than 12 feet. Then the water would pour over the wall and it wouldn’t be able to get out. Then they’d have to bring in pumps to pump it all out.”

“One of the solutions we’re suggesting is you have sort of ‘sacrificial space’ that would be at sidewalk level, but might require customers to go up a flight of stairs [inside] to get to the retail and merchandise,” Cotter said. “Another option is you make your retail or restaurant space very water resistant. You could build it out [of something other than] sheet rock, and you put up concrete, or stucco, or tiles.”

At least two businesses in Jersey City on Grand Street are built in this way, said Cotter, and even though they were hit during Hurricane Sandy, they were able to reopen faster than many other businesses that do not have similarly waterproofed floors and walls.

Cotter, Zimmer, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy, and Brandy Forbes, director of Planning and Community Development in Hoboken, recently met in Trenton with officials from FEMA, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the state Department of Community Affairs to see if the new guidelines can be modified and adapted to fit urban communities.

EVE Online has the odd distinction of being one of the only MMOs in which the developers have almost no control over the active storyline. There have been plenty of fiction articles written about the game's backstory, and the NPC factions occasionally butt heads in short news pieces, but none of it feels very real. It's only when these events actually occur inside the game world that they become real, and when that happens, the outcome is at the mercy of players.

2010's spectacular Sansha abduction live event was the perfect example of this, with thousands of players becoming immersed in a very real emerging storyline. The story was fluid and evolved based on what players did, and so it made the NPC factions come alive in a way that fiction never could. While the scripted NPC portions of these storylines certainly constitute part of EVE's history, the most interesting tales follow the unexpected actions of players and alliances.

The fascinating thing is that the audience for these stories extends far beyond the playerbase itself, with news of high-profile events occasionally taking the global gaming media by storm. But for every 3,000-man battle and 200 billion ISK scam that's reported, there are hundreds of smaller events that would be just as interesting to read about or watch a video on. Most of these events have been lost to the mists of time, kept secret or talked about only among those directly involved ... until now.

The Sansha storyline showed that it doesn't take much to get players involved in the NPC plot. The idea of taking part in a unique in-game event that will never be repeated is a pretty strong motivator, and the possibility of causing havoc at such an event is an even stronger one. The most surprising thing about the Sansha story is that players didn't just participate in scripted events; they steered them and collectively decided the outcome. New organisations and intelligence networks emerged to rapidly respond to the Sansha attacks, players debated the plot on the forums, and some players were even allowed to switch sides and become Sansha slaves.

The recent NPC storylines haven't been played out in-game, so they've passed largely under the radar so far. The Amarr empire has discovered a unique implant in a sleeper stronghold that can transfer consciousness at the moment of death, giving ground troops the same immortality as capsuleers. This storyline will tie DUST 514 into EVE, following the wars between the empires following the introduction of this new technology. CCP has promised to run these stories as actual live events inside EVE and DUST, and I personally can't wait to see how it all turns out.