Nearly a decade after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed piers and damaged riverside social housing projects, residents of Lower Manhattan are still vulnerable to floods.

Michael Kimmelman, The Times’s architecture critic, explores the nine-year effort to redesign Lower Manhattan in the wake of the hurricane, and the design and planning challenges that have made progress incremental. He goes inside a fight over how to protect the neighborhood in the future — revealing why renewal in the face of climate disaster is so complicated.

This story was narrated by Michael Kimmelman. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway’s public square.

The New York Times works with philanthropic organizations that share its belief that editorial independence is crucial to the power and value of its journalism. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative.