Wait until the next hurricane hits New York. And it's almost certainly "when," not "if."

Places like Rockaway, Coney Island and Manhattan Beach "are stretches of land that nature has created to protect the mainland from hurricanes," Lee says. "In our civilization this is also the most desirable land to develop and build on. We're not going to undevelop it. So we now have to deal with the threat.

They have much endeveloped (urbanly renewed) it. Stretches of the Rockaway Peninsula have been empty for decades. The hurricanes of the '50s and '60s took down trees (many weeping willows) that had survived the '38 storm which had, apparently due to its rapid forward motion, spared NYC as it devastated eastern Long Island.

Naparstek presents the worst case of the right side of a major hurricane striking NYC.

Evacuation? Fuggetaboutit.

You can find the full PDF of the New York City Hurricane Evacuation Map here:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/pdf/hurricane_brochure_english.pdf

(The old web page was in Google's cache)