As visitors to the Center for Architecture—the Lower Manhattan home of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY)—awaited the start of a panel called "Designing the City after Superstorm Sandy," they took in a photo that was projected on the screen depicting an image all too familiar these days: Debris piled up in the middle of a residential street, left behind from Sandy’s unprecedented storm surge. There were audible gasps and groans in the standing-room-only crowd when the AIANY 2012 president Joseph Aliotta, revealed in his opening remarks that the picture was taken right outside his home in Staten Island. While his house was spared serious damage, many of his neighbors were not so lucky. "Many lost their homes and, others, their lives," he said.
Such is the state of affairs across the region, which was walloped by the category 1 hurricane that made landfall on October 29. Water surged to heights of 14 feet in Lower Manhattan’s financial district, and communities in Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn suffered extensive flooding and infrastructure damage.
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