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How might rising sea levels transform Vancouver?

The Granville Depths? The Shaughnessy Peninsula? The Wet End?

Seattle-based map-maker and urban planner Jeffrey Linn has released a series of city maps, including one for Vancouver, showing how rising sea levels might drastically change coastal living.

See Vancouver's map here.

The predicted sea level rise shown in the maps is based on the U.S Geological Survey's prediction of an 80-metre rise if the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melt completely. When and if this might happen is up for debate, with one estimate putting it somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 years in the future.

Despite this uncertainty, the maps show a radically different landscape that will turn much of Metro Vancouver into an Atlantis-type city, and create an explosion of waterfront property.

Linn has added more appropriate names to his altered landscape. UBC sits on "Endowment Island," since Kitsilano is submerged. Downtown (or "Drowntown") is completely underwater, creating Condo Reef, and the very tip of Stanley Park sits above sea level, known as Stanley Rock.

Check out more from Linn's project here.

Nich Johansen is completing a practicum with The Tyee.


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