Blame it on the being the egghead capital of the world, but from Fan Pier to new ballparks, the Hub would rather debate grand projects to death rather than actually build them. And the same pattern now appears to be emerging with what to do about Greater Boston’s newfound vulnerability to our ever angrier and more unpredictable oceans.

There’s a profusion of exotic schemes out there aimed at protecting Boston from rising sea levels decades from now, with the Urban Land Institute the latest to weigh in with its vision of turning Beantown into another Venice by the end of the 21st century.

Two years after an epic hurricane turned Manhattan into a water park and swept away large swaths of the New Jersey coastline, Boston and other Bay State coastal communities are still woefully unprepared to deal with a Sandy-like storm surge.

While talk of canals in and around Boston two or three generations from now are all nice and fine, what’s needed are ways to help Boston absorb a Sandy-like hit and get back on its feet without being completely immobilized.

“Where is the city and the state when it comes to major infrastructure?” asks David Begelfer, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, which represents developers from across the state. “I bet you if we had another Sandy that hit Boston, I don’t know if we are going to be better prepared than we were two years ago.”

Looming Disaster?

The Boston Redevelopment Authority may soon help fill in the gap between the need to prepare for storm surges now and preparing for an even more waterlogged future in the decades ahead.

City Hall’s development arm is kicking off an international contest this week aimed at teams of experts that will examine how buildings, neighborhoods and the city as a whole can prepare and adapt, now and into the future.

“We are looking for replicable and implementable strategies – how do we get from here to here, a phased approach over time,” said John Dalzell, senior architect for sustainable development at the BRA.

That said, as it stands now, Boston’s waterfront, jammed with new and planned luxury apartment towers and corporate high-rises, is living on borrowed time. Climate change is already upon us, with Sandy providing a preview of the kind of catastrophe the increasingly powerful and intense storms of the 21st century may visit upon waterfront neighborhoods and communities.

It was only a matter of blind luck that Boston escaped disaster when Sandy flooded the Big Apple in the fall of 2012, inundating New York’s subway system and short-circuiting power grids. The storm hit Boston at low tide – if it had hit at high tide, much of downtown Boston and shiny new luxury condo towers would have suddenly been hit by the surging waters of the Atlantic.

Since then, we have escaped serious flooding twice more during major winter storms that conveniently blew in during low tide, notes Peter Papesch, co-chair of the sustainability education committee of the Boston Society of Architects.

Yet instead of a well-coordinated public sector effort to start making Boston and other waterfront communities more storm resilient, we are instead left with scattershot efforts by developers of some of Boston’s new towers and projects to storm-proof their buildings.

Proliferating Mandates

City officials are now requiring developers of new towers to install their mechanical systems, which have often gone in the basement or in parking garages, to higher floors that would keep them high and dry during a storm surge.

Boston Properties has taken things a step further, acquiring a portable, four-foot high seawall that can be rolled out ahead of a big storm to protect its Atlantic Wharf tower complex.

These are all sensible moves, but we’re talking about the new towers – a fraction of Boston’s skyline and cityscape. It won’t do anyone any good to have a few waterproof towers if the rest of downtown Boston – like Manhattan during Sandy – crashes, with the power grid knocked out and the subway systems flooded with seawater. Motor boating to meetings in dry but darkened towers hardly sounds like an appealing option for companies that have paid big bucks for offices in downtown Boston.

“I would be more worried about the next hurricane,” NAIOP’s Begelfer said. “We are not talking about permanent sea level rise, but storm surges that close down businesses and isolate people from their homes.”

The private sector is in the lead when it comes to preparing for the next Sandy, voluntarily or not. The public sector, on the other hand, which is great at issuing mandates, is full of talk about reviews aimed at uncovering vulnerabilities, but is so far short on action. After all, action will cost a lot more than words – tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in implementation costs.

When we see some real proposals with some big price-tags, then we will really know some serious plans are afoot. So far, the only real number on the table is Gov. Deval Patrick’s authorization of $10 million for coastal walls and dam repair.

New York provides a roadmap for the kind of work that will need to be done and it’s hardly on the cheap. By comparison, the Big Apple plans to spend on $20 billion on floodwalls and reinforced dunes, bulkheads, surge barriers and levees.

Debating Fantasy Projects

The biggest debate right now when it comes to climate change in Boston is not how to prepare for another Sandy. Rather, it’s how to prepare Boston for life in 2050 or 2100, when the Atlantic will have risen anywhere from a couple of feet to another seven feet.

ULI’s local chapter grabbed headlines with its vision of a Boston transformed into a new Venice or Amsterdam, with Storrow Drive and other major roadways transformed into canals. Instead of battling to keep every drop of ocean water out, ULI envisions a future in which the Hub lets the water in and adapts.

The proposal was immediately blasted by Papesch of the BSA. Stressing that he is offering his own opinion rather than that of the BSA’s, Papesch contends what’s really needed is a giant sea wall cutting across Boston Harbor, one that will protect not just Boston, but also other coastal communities along the harbor. He calls the ULI proposal “puny,” and argues a multibillion-dollar Big Dig level investment is needed. I’m more of a keep-the-water-out rather than let-it-in guy – my worry is that instead of canals, we’ll end up with a giant swamp in the middle of the Financial District.

Regardless, the fact that the public debate until now has been over such cool but hugely expensive and politically unpalatable ideas points to a larger problem. If Patrick couldn’t even get his ambitious road and bridge repair plan passed, there’s no chance of Beacon Hill voting for a Big Dig-sized project to throw up a wall in the middle of the harbor.

Debating fantasy projects is all well and fine, but no one should confuse it with real action – or the emergence of a more realistic attitude towards the challenges ahead. If anything, all the talk of canals and should bring one to the exact opposition conclusion. Unlike storm-ravaged New York, we are nowhere near ready to deal with the practical implications – and huge costs – of preparing for climate change.

Nothing teaches like bitter experience. And it may take a Sandy-like disaster here to spark a real debate about what truly needs to be done to protect Boston and other coastal communities today, here and now, not in 2100. 

Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com