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Comment by philjohn | Hacker News Reader

Zeeland (and other parts of the Netherlands) now have a similar strategy in place - they've spent billions over the years on sea defences, which are absolutely stunning to behold, but have now done the sums and realised they've entered diminishing returns. It's cheaper to let certain areas flood and compensate than it is to build ever more expensive defences.

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There was an interesting story a few months back about how the city of Nashville has a process where they buy homes in flood-prone areas at a "fair market price", then demolish the homes and convert the property to "green space" (preventing new buildings from being constructed). The main idea was that this is cheaper in the long run than the continuing cost of disaster recovery, emergency services, etc. for people in these areas. I don't think Nashville is the only city doing this sort of thing, but it was news to me when I heard about it.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/09/08/nashville-ma...

Austin has done that to homes along Onion Creek. Like you said - it's cheaper in the long run to buy the property so that people's homes don't get flooded, with all the knock-on effects afterwards.

I have a feeling that at _some_ point, a politician is going to see all of this land that the city owns and get dollar signs in their eyes, and it will eventually be privately-owned and built-up again.

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