Alexandros Washburn, an architect, urban planner and designer experienced first-hand the flooding of his neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.  Moved to find ways to make cities more resilient he became a Professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology.  He previously served as as Chief Urban Designer for New York City in the Department of City Planning. At Stevens Institute, he and his team developed a plan for building a breakwater island to protect Red Hook, which would both act as a barrier and create new real estate to pay for the project.  Along the way he discovered this was not a new idea, and that the City had actually begun building such an island in the early 1920s.