The City Sponge

On the surface, The City Sponge is a newsletter about helping people in NYC with flooding info and tips on how they can be more resilient, from the basement to the broader community. But that topic can easily overwhelm people with many sub-topics and deter them from taking action. And it is action between the storms that leads to resilient cities. So the big idea is chunking up the various aspects into smaller digestible stories: from waterproofing your home to sewer connections and stormwater management, from insurance and real estate laws to return on investment, from feeling overwhelmed to feeling engaged and supporting good policies. And these stories generate a list of willing consumers who need help making the journey to resilient practices. Along the way we leverage AI tools for solution QA and assessment on local regs, vendor selection, or risk. The audience and data can be used for market research about the sector. And the dialogue can provide community engagement on larger public projects or even policy changes. In this way, The City Sponge is starting small but aims to be a larger platform for resiliency education and action, helping consumers learn to live with more water, and helping the industry and government learn how to engage them. If we can make it work here (NYC) then....you know the song.