For me, the most poignant photograph of the destruction left by hurricane Sandy was of the Fairway supermarket in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I used to shop there on weekends and, in the café at the back, next to two disused trams, would enjoy the vista of New York harbour and the Statue of Liberty.
Red Hook epitomises the city’s resurgence and the new challenge it faces. The docks of On The Waterfront, abandoned in the 1960s when containers shifted the port to New Jersey, suffered years of blight, like the city as a whole. These days, Van Brunt Street is lined with shops and restaurants – and the flooded warehouses that house Fairway and expensive apartments.
Watching the spirited New York response – Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his sign-language interpreter, babies being ferried out of New York University hospital, locals braving the blackout on the Lower East Side, pledges to drain the flooded subways – it is easy to underestimate the longer-term calamity. Hurricanes do not keep engulfing New York. This should not be happening.