Climate resilience for a neighborhood without privilege: East Boston

This architecture thesis is about climate change and unprivileged populations – sea-level rise in particular, and the neighborhood of East Boston. Across recorded human history, the burdens of climate stress have fallen disproportionately on marginal populations, and today is no different. We don’t have to travel to a South Pacific island to see the risk posed by sea-level rise – that risk can be found right here along the New England coastline. Neighborhoods with a minimum of privilege face challenges to their existence – and those residents want to stay in their homes and preserve their communities just like anybody else. This project examines a series of tactical design interventions to help the community of East Boston stay in place but adapt to a future that includes periodic and sustained flooding. How will homeowners respond, individually and collectively? Substantial public assets – health centers, boys-and-girls clubs, schools and churches – knit together the community. How can we modify those structures in place to be resilient toward rising sea levels? With a grounding in prior architectural responses to traumatic changes in the built environment (sea-level rise among them), we propose specific steps for sites in the neighborhoods of Maverick Square and Jeffries Point