Some of the most recognizable artwork depicting the American West is heading to auction at Christie’s, where dozens of pieces from billionaire Bill Koch’s collection are expected to fetch at least $50 million.The in-person “Visions of the West” sale will take place in New York over two sessions beginning Jan. 20, with the final lots offered appropriately at high noon the following day. Koch’s holdings include major works by Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell and Albert Bierstadt, artists whose images of cowboys, Native Americans and sweeping landscapes helped define how generations came to picture the American frontier.Tylee Abbott, head of Christie’s American Art Department, said interest in Western subjects has remained strong as new audiences discover the culture and mythology of the region.“What is out West? What is over the horizon?” he mused. “It goes on to embody the American spirit.”Bill Koch’s brothers David and Charles Koch were major donors to conservative causes. Although he has pursued different ventures since a 1980s business dispute with his brothers, Bill Koch traces his longtime love of Western art to their childhood.“I was born and raised in Kansas and spent childhood summers working on my father’s ranches in Montana and Texas,” Koch said in a statement to The Associated Press. He described himself as “a child of the American Plains,” shaped by the Western art that hung in his home and the stories of the region’s past.The auction will include 16 sculptures by Remington, along with his painting “Coming to the Call,” which is expected to sell for $6 million to $8 million, according to Christie’s. There will also be both a small and large version of Remington’s “Bronco Buster” bronze sculpture. Russell’s “The Sun Worshippers” is projected to sell for $4 million to $6 million. Bierstadt’s bright vistas of mountains and plains are also among the featured works.Michael Clawson, executive editor of Western Art Collector magazine, said the esthetics of the region continue to surprise people who see them for the first time.“When you come here, there is something about the light, the atmosphere, the colors,” said Clawson, who grew up in Phoenix. He said the Western art genre has existed since the early 1800s and remains vibrant today, as younger collectors discover the genre and new artists keep it alive.And in the current century, population and wealth have surged across several Western states, with Arizona, Utah and Nevada each gaining well over a million residents since 2000. In the last decade, the median household income in the West rose from $58,000 in 2014 to almost $93,000 in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.The sale at Christie’s could attract collectors from across the nation, and the scale of the auction likely makes it one of the most significant Western art offerings in years. Christie’s has not said why Koch is selling, with the billionaire telling the AP simply, “It is time to pass along these pieces.”
Associated Press writer Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this story.
Corey Williams, Associated Press
Sweeping taxes on imports have cost the average American household nearly $1,200 since Donald Trump returned to the White House this year, according to calculations by Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.Using Treasury Department numbers on revenue from tariffs and Goldman Sachs estimates of who ends up paying for them, the Democrats’ report Thursday found that American consumers’ share of the bill came to nearly $159 billion or $1,198 per household from February through November.“This report shows that (Trump’s) tariffs have done nothing but drive prices even higher for families,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the economic committee. “At a time when both parties should be working together to lower costs, the president’s tax on American families is simply making things more expensive.”In his second term, Trump has reversed decades of U.S. policy that favored free trade. He’s imposed double-digit tariffs on almost every country on earth. According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, the average U.S. tariff has shot up from 2.4% at the beginning of the year to 16.8%, the highest since 1935.The president argues that the import taxes will protect U.S. industries from unfair foreign competition, bring factories to the United States and raise money for the Treasury.“President Trump’s tariffs have actually secured trillions in investments to make and hire in America as well as historic trade deals that finally level the playing field for American workers and industries,” said White House Spokesman Kush Desai. “Democrats spent decades complaining about lopsided trade deals undermining the American working class, and now they’re complaining about the one president who has done something about it.”The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass along the higher costs to their customers.Democrats did well in elections last month in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because voters blame Trump and the Republicans for the high cost of living, just as they’d blamed Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the same thing a year earlier.Economist Kimberly Clausing of the UCLA School of Law and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, last week told a House subcommittee that Trump’s tariffs amount to “the largest tax increase on American consumers in a generation, lowering standards of living for all Americans.” Clausing, a Treasury Department tax official in the Biden administration, has calculated that Trump’s import taxes “amount to an annual tax increase of about $1,700 for an average household.”
Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
Coca-Cola said Wednesday that its chief operating officer will become its next CEO in the first quarter of 2026.The Atlanta beverage giant said its board elected Henrique Braun as CEO effective March 31. James Quincey, Coke’s current chairman and CEO, will transition to executive chairman of the company.Braun, 57, has worked at Coca-Cola for three decades. Prior to assuming the COO role earlier this year, he led operations in Brazil, Latin America, Greater China and South Korea. He has held positions overseeing Coke’s supply chain, new business development, marketing, innovation, general management and bottling operations.Braun was born in California and raised in Brazil. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering from the University Federal of Rio de Janeiro, a master of science degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from Georgia State University.David Weinberg, Coca-Cola’s lead independent director, called Quincey, 60, a “transformative leader” who will continue to remain active in the business.During Quincey’s nine years as CEO, Coke added more than 10 additional billion-dollar brands, including BodyArmor and Fairlife. He also brought Coke into the alcoholic drink market with Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, which went on sale in 2021.In 2020, Quincey led a restructuring that reduced Coke’s brands by half and laid off thousands of employees. Quincey said Coke wanted to streamline its structure and focus its investments on fast-growing products like its Simply and Minute Maid juices.But as Quincey steps down as CEO, Coke is facing numerous challenges, including tepid demand for its products in the U.S. and Europe and increasing customer scrutiny of its ingredients. This summer, after a nudge from President Donald Trump, Coke said it would release a version of its trademark Cola with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.Weinberg said the board is confident that Braun will build on the company’s strengths and seek out growth opportunities globally.Coke shares were flat in after-market trading.
Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
Vibe coding has come to Washington.
Figma’s AI prototyping tool Figma Make is now available to its Figma for Government users, letting government product managers and designers build and iterate on prototypes and apps with a prompt. The development comes as federal agencies face a loomingand possibly impossibledeadline.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in August that established a National Design Studio and an initiative to improve government services by Independence Day next year, but government cuts mean there are fewer federal workers to get the job done.
It’s a huge undertaking, considering the government’s digital footprint, which includes more than 10,000 websites used by more 400 million people, businesses, and organizations annually.
The hope is that Figma Make will cut the production time of prototypes from weeks to hours, as federal teams will be able to use vibe coding, or letting an AI application make code for them, to iterate faster on mockup elements like a website user flow.
Figma received FedRAMP authorization earlier this year, a clearance that gives its software a stamp of approval for use across the U.S. government. Already, the San Franciscobased design software company says it has more than 100 federal, regional, and local government agencies around the world as customers, including several U.S. federal government agencies, though they declined to name them.
The news shows how Silicon Valley is taking a growing role in government design work in Trump’s second term. Trump named Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia chief design officer, and on Tuesday, the Defense Department announced it would use Google’s Gemini for its AI platform.
Figma reported 38% year-over-year growth of $274 million in its November quarterly earnings call. CEO Dylan Field said about 30% of its biggest customers spending $100,000 or more in annual recurring revenue were using Figma Make on a weekly basis.
The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point Wednesday for the third time since September, bringing its key rate to about 3.6%, the lowest in nearly three years. Before September, it had gone nine months without a cut.The benchmark rate is the rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another, and the Fed has two goals when it sets the rate: one, to manage prices for goods and services, and two, to encourage full employment. The benchmark rate also affects the interest rates consumers pay to borrow money via credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other financial products.Typically, the Fed might increase the rate to try to bring down inflation and decrease it to encourage faster economic growth, including by boosting hiring. The challenge now is that inflation remains higher than the Fed’s 2% target but the job market has cooled. The government shutdown had also prevented the timely collection and release of some data the Fed relies on to monitor the health of the economy.Here’s what to know:
Interest on savings accounts will continue to decline
For savers, falling interest rates will continue to erode attractive yields currently on offer with certificates of deposit (CDs) and high-yield savings accounts.Three of the big five banks (Ally, American Express, and Synchrony) cut their savings account rates since the last Fed rate cut in October, according to Ken Tumin, founder of DepositAccounts.com. The top rates for high yield savings accounts right now remain around 4.35% to 4.6%.Those are still better than the trends of recent years, and a good option for consumers who want to earn a return on money they may want to access in the near-term. A high yield savings account generally has a much higher annual percentage yield than a traditional savings account. The national average for traditional savings accounts is currently 0.61%, according to Bankrate.
A cut will impact mortgages gradually
For prospective homebuyers, the market has already priced in the rate cut, meaning mortgage rates continue to hover around the lowest levels in more than a year.Mortgage rates are also influenced by bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.“While there’s no guarantee that the Fed’s move will push mortgage rates lower, there’s reason to be optimistic that homebuyers could see rates below 6.00% in the next year, even if only briefly,” according to Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. “That would likely spur more Americans to refinance their current high-rate mortgages and possibly even to consider shopping for a new home.”
Credit card rate relief could be slow
Interest rates for credit cards are currently at an average of 19.80%, down from a record-high 20.79% set in August 2024, but still historically high. The Fed’s rate cut may be slow to be felt by anyone carrying a large amount of credit card debt. That said, any reduction is positive news.“The reductions could mean hundreds of dollars in savings for debtors,” according to LendingTree’s Schulz.While the decrease is incremental, improved affordability could also help stabilize delinquency trends, according to Michele Raneri, vice president of U.S. research at credit reporting bureau TransUnion.“Lower borrowing costs can begin to ease household budgets, providing relief from inflationary pressures and reducing financial stress,” she said.Still, the best thing for anyone carrying a large credit card balance is to prioritize paying down high-interest-rate debt, and to seek to transfer any amounts possible to lower APR cards or negotiate directly with credit card companies for accommodation.Raneri added that the current economic environment continues to be defined by “persistent affordability challenges.”
Auto loans are not expected to decline soon
Americans have faced steeper auto loan rates over the last three years after the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate starting in early 2022. Those are not expected to decline anytime soon. While a cut will contribute to eventual relief, it might be slow in arriving, analysts say.And more borrowers are falling behind on car payments, a sign of economic distress. In October, 6.65% of subprime borrowers were at least 60 days late on their payments, according to Fitch Ratings, the highest delinquency rate on record, since record-keeping began in the early 1990s. The costs of both new and used vehicles remain high, according to Bankrate, which may be in part due to a shortage of used cars.Generally speaking, an auto loan annual percentage rate can run from about 4% to 30%, depending on the borrower’s credit score. Bankrate’s most recent weekly survey found that average auto loan interest rates are currently at 7.05% on a 60-month new car loan.
The cut signals the Fed cares about the labor market
If you’re a job-seeker right now, the Fed rate cut is good news, since cheaper borrowing for businesses could help them invest in additional employees to grow their business.“Overall, we’ve seen a slowing demand for workers with employers not hiring the way they did a couple of years ago,” said Cory Stahle, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “By lowering the interest rate, you make it a little more financially reasonable for employers to hire additional people. Especially in some areas – like startups, where companies lean pretty heavily on borrowed money – that’s the hope here.”Stahle acknowledged that it could take time for the rate cuts to filter down to employers and then to workers, but he said the signal of the reduction is also important.“Beyond the size of the cut, it tells employers and job-seekers something about the Federal Reserve’s priorities and focus. That they’re concerned about the labor market and willing to step in and support the labor market. It’s an assurance of the reserve’s priorities.”The Associated Press receives support from the Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.
Cora Lewis, Associated Press
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are taking Gemini Space Station Inc. into the prediction market space.
The cryptocurrency exchanges CEO and president, respectively, said on Thursday that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has granted a Designated Contract Market (DCM) license to a company affiliate called Gemini Titan, LLC.
Gemini Titan will offer event contracts written as yes-or-no questions about future occurrences, essentially letting U.S. users gamble on the outcomes of everyday events.
As examples, Gemini in its announcement provided the questions, Will 1 bitcoin end this year higher than $200k? and Will Elon Musks X end up paying the full $140 million fine to the European Commission in 2026?
The news comes three months after the Winklevoss twins, made infamous in the 2010 film The Social Network, brought Gemini public amid a wave of crypto-focused IPOs this year.
Geminis shares (Nasdaq:GEMI) soared about 16% during after-hours and into premarket trading on Thursday.
However, its stock is still down more than 64% from a high that it had reached around its market debut in September.
“Making America the crypto capital of the world”
The CFTCs granting of the license comes half a decade after Gemini first applied on March 10, 2020.
Tyler Winklevoss credited the approval to President Trump for ending the Biden Administrations War on Crypto.
He also thanked the CFTCs acting chairman, Caroline D. Pham, for her hard work and dedication to help realize President Trumps vision for making America the crypto capital of the world.
Tyler Winklevoss continued his fawning: Its incredibly refreshing and invigorating to have a President and a financial regulator who are pro crypto, pro innovation, and pro America.
As for when Gemini Titan will be up and running, the release simply states that it’s starting shortly.
U.S. customers should be able to use dollars to trade event contracts in their Gemini account on the web and, eventually, the mobile app. The company adds that Gemini Titan might add crypto futures, options, and perpetual contracts to its derivative offerings in the future.
It will have to compete with existing prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi.
Today, investors are waking up to red on their screens as many tech and AI stocks are dropping in premarket trading.
But why are shares in these companies falling? Much of it has to do with the cloud infrastructure company Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and its latest quarterly earnings results. Heres what you need to know.
Oracle’s Q2 2026 results send ORCL plunging
Yesterday, Oracle reported financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2026. To say investors were disappointed in the results is an understatement, given how poorly ORCL shares are performing in premarket trading this morning.
As of the time of this writing, ORCL shares are down over 12% as investors unpack its results:
Non-GAAP Earnings per Share: $2.26
Total Revenue: $16.1 billion
On the surface, the numbers look good. Non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) were up 54% and total revenue was up 14%.
However, as noted by CNBC, while Oracles non-GAAP EPS beat LSEG analyst expectations of $1.64, analysts were expecting higher total revenue figures: $16.21 billion versus the $16.1 billion Oracle delivered.
That discrepancy caused the stock to tumble, even after the company announced new agreements with major AI investors, Nvidia, and Meta.
As noted by Investopedia, although these agreements have helped boost Oracle’s remaining performance obligations to $523 billion, they have also raised investor concerns about circular spending in the AI industry.
Circular spending refers to when companies invest in each other, effectively passing money back and forth.
Circular spending is also one of the biggest reasons why many fear we could be in an AI bubble waiting to pop.
Chip stocks fall after Oracles earnings results
These AI bubble fears seem to have been renewed today after Oracles financial results. As of the time of this writing, major chip companies operating in the AI space are seeing stock price declines, including:
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD): down 1.2%
Arm Holdings plc (Nasdaq: ARM): down 1.2%
Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO): down 1.3%
Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC): down 1%
Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU): down 1.1%
NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): down 1.3%
QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM): down 0.9%
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE: TSM): down 1.4%
Big Tech shares are also falling after Nvidias earnings
Oracle’s disappointing earnings and renewed fears of an AI bubble also seem to be impacting the stock prices of many of techs most prominent players this morning, albeit to a lesser extent:
Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG): down 0.5%
Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN): down 0.7%
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL): up 0.1%
Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META): down 0.9%
Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT): down 0.6%
Nvidia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): down 1.3%
As for Oracle itself, the companys stock price is currently down over 12% to $196.25 per share.
This decline follows a strong year for Oracle. As of yesterday’s close, the stock is up 33% so far in 2025, outperforming the Nasdaq Composite’s rise of 22.68%. Over the past 12 months, ORCL shares have climbed 25%.
I spend most days in rooms where four generations argue about the same spreadsheet.
Boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z staff the same executive teams, often guided by directors from a fifththe Silent Generation. Four different eras, four different mental operating systems, one quarterly earnings call. When leaders tell me, Weve got a generation problem, what they usually have is a self-awareness problem.
A widely cited review of so-called generational differences at work found that many popular stereotypes dont hold up very well when you look at actual data on values and attitudes. At the same time, more recent research shows that age-mixed teams can outperform when leaders handle the friction with care.
So, the data tell us two things at once: People from different birth years are less alien than weve been told, and they can be a strength or a liability depending on how leaders show up.
After three decades recruiting and coaching leaders, Ive learned a simple rule: What you can see, you can shape. What you cant see quietly shapes you.
How our eras built our habits
Im a boomer. I grew up on a steady diet of show up early, stay late, say yes, sir. That wiring served me well in my time at the White House and later in boardrooms. It also produced a habit that took me years to spot: the urge to please.
In hard conversations, Id soften the edges. Add extra words. Smooth things over. Younger colleagues didnt experience that as kindness. They experienced it as dodging. They wanted clarity, not choreography.
Psychologist Jean Twenge, in her book Generations, shows how each cohorts habits grew out of the era that raised them: boom-time expansion, layoffs and divorce, student debt and purpose-driven careers, social media and permanent comparison. None of that is virtue or vice. Its conditioning.
Trouble comes when we treat our conditioning as the gold standard and everyone elses as a flaw.
The most freeing move Ive made as a leader was saying to myself, My boomer urge to be agreeable is watering down the truth. Once I named it, I could do something about it.
A good first question for any leader is small and uncomfortable: What do people my age regularly praise me for that might secretly be wearing my team out?
When senior leaders look in the mirror
This isnt just a mid-career problem. Senior leaders wrestle with it too.
Elon Musk, a Gen Xer, has spoken openly about his pathologically optimistic timelines. That belief that nearly anything is solvable with enough grit, iteration, and contrarian thinkingis one of the hallmark traits of the Generation X worldview. For Elon, is has helped drive rockets, electric cars, and ambitious AI projects, and it has also pushed employees into impossible deadlines when reality didnt cooperate.
A classic boomer, Jamie Dimon, notes that his vigilance on risk is a strength, and he knows it can land as sharp or impatient in the room. Warren Buffett has explained in shareholder letters that his strong loyalty to managers sometimes kept him from moving fast enough to replace them when performance lagged.
These leaders didnt erase their blind spots. They acknowledged them, adjusted, and built teams that were allowed to tell the truth back to them and accelerated performance and massive shareholder value creation. The same move is available to the rest of us.
Caricatures versus real people
Generational caricatures are easier than real work. Boomers as workaholics. Gen X as cynical. Millennials as needy. Gen Z as fragile. They make for good jokes; they make for bad leadership.
A study of multigenerational teams found that most friction comes from mismatched assumptions about communication, career speed, and feedback, not from wildly different values. That lines up with what I see in succession conversations: People want to grow, feel useful, and be treated fairly, regardless of their birth year. They simply learned different ways to signal those desires.
You dont need a grand theory to lead through that. You need a few habits that make your own lens visible to you and to others.
5 small moves to shrink the ‘generation gap’
Heres a list I often give to CEOs who are tired of the generational blame game:
Run a shadow meeting review once a month. After a key meeting, ask one person whos at least 15 years older or younger than you: Walk me through how that meeting felt to youwhat landed, what didnt? Listen without defending.
Add a two-question feedback round every quarter. Ask your direct reports: Whats one thing I should keep doing? Whats one thing I should adjust? No surveys. Just live conversation.
Pair up for reverse mentoring. Invite a younger colleague to teach you one digital habit or collaboratio tool they rely on. In return, offer one story about a time you failed and recovered. Research on reverse mentoring points to gains on both sidesskills and understanding grow together.
Narrate your intent. In tense moments, say aloud what youre trying to do: Im pushing hard here because Im worried about risk, or Im being quiet here because I want to hear others first. Youll be surprised how much misreading that removes.
Pick one generational habit to bend. A Silent-era or boomer leader might deliberately leave the office on time twice a week and invite a younger colleague to walk out with them. A Millennial or Gen Z leader might choose one meeting a day where the laptop stays shut and the phone stays face-down.
None of that requires a task force. It does require an honest look in the mirror.
The real bridge across generations
When leaders learn to notice their own blind spots and talk openly about them, something changes in the room. Silent-era steadiness calms Gen Z anxiety. boomer grit reinforces Millennial desire for purpose. Gen X realism ties these temperaments together.
The bridge is not another app, policy, or slogan about generations. The bridge is a leader willing to see themselves clearly and invite others to do the same.
Instacarts artificial intelligence-enabled pricing may be increasing the cost of your groceries by as much as $1,200 a year, according to a new study published on Monday.
Instacart is an online grocery delivery and pickup service that allows customers to order groceries from local stores by using its technology platform, via app or its website, and then fulfills those orders through a personal shopper.
The investigation from Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, found that some identical products were priced differently from one customer to the nextsometimes by as much as 23%. One company executive reportedly called the tactic smart rounding in an email between Instacart and Costco that Consumer Reports says was inadvertently sent to the magazine by Costco.
The findings are based on data from 200 volunteers who checked prices on 20 items, in four cities, and found a difference in about 75% of those items in some of the biggest grocery and big-box retailers, including Costco, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, Albertsons, and Target. (Prices for the same products varied from as little as 7 cents to $2.56 per item.)
Instacart, which previously disclosed its pricing experiments in corporate marketing and investor materials, said its shoppers are not aware that theyre involved in an experiment, but said the resulting price differences are small and negligible.
“These tests are not dynamic pricingprices never change in real time, including in response to supply and demand,” an Instagram spokesperson told Fast Company. “The tests are never based on personal or behavioral characteristicsthey are completely randomized.”
Instacart said the stores control the prices, and they work closely with them to align online and in-store pricing, wherever possible.
“Each retailers pricing policy is displayed on their Instacart storefront, so customers always know when prices may differ from in-store and can easily compare prices across retailers before checkout,” the spokesperson added. “Just as retailers have long tested prices in their physical stores to better understand consumer preferences, a subset of only 10 retail partnersones that already apply markupsdo the same online via Instacart. These limited, short-term, and randomized tests help retail partners learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable.”
As a result, a customer may see slightly lower prices on family staples such as milk or bread, and slightly higher prices on less price-sensitive products like craft beverages or specialty snacks, Instacart said.
They look like ordinary basketball courts. But two new courts built next to public housing in New York City double as flood prevention.
In a sudden flash floodwhen the citys aging sewer system can easily become overwhelmed and streets can fill with waterthe sunken basketball courts act like retention basins. The design can hold as much as 330,000 gallons, with the courts lowest areas filling like a pool and additional water stored in bioretention cells beneath the surface.
[Photo: courtesy Grain Collective]
The project becomes like a sponge, which basically holds the water as much as it can, says Runit Chhaya, principal at Grain Collective, a landscape architecture firm that worked on the design with city agencies, local residents, engineers from Hazen and Sawyer, and the urban planning firm Marc Wouters Studios. It helps in not putting stress on the city storm system during a flood event.
[Image: courtesy Grain Collective]
The redesign is part of a larger program that began in 2017, when the New York City Department of Environmental Protection drew inspiration from the way that low-lying cities like Copenhagen were dealing with “cloudbursts” of extreme rain.
Climate change is making heavy storms more likely because warmer air holds more moisture, loading clouds with extra water. Its an even bigger challenge in cities like New York that are covered in pavement and that have combined sewer systems, meaning a single system handles both household sewage and stormwater.
[Photo: courtesy Grain Collective]
As the city looked for ways to capture stormwater, public housing sites presented an opportunity. “NYCHA is unique in having large pieces of property within very dense neighborhoods that provide the opportunity to mitigate stormwater overflows in a way that most properties do not,” says Siobhan Watson, vice president of sustainability at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
There was also an opportunity to improve public space. The design team worked closely with NYCHA residents, emphasizing that the project wasn’t just about climate change. “It’s very hard to go to these communities and just start talking about climate change and flood protection because they are thinking about basic needs and we are talking about infrastructure they didn’t even ask for,” says Chhaya. “So you kind of change the storyand it’s an honest story that, hey, it’s actually a win-win situation. You’re going to get an upgraded amenity.”
At South Jamaica Houses, an apartment complex in a low-lying, flood-prone neighborhood in Queens, the project replaced two older basketball courts with the new sunken design. The courts are now surrounded by steps so spectators can watch a game or casually hang out. The space is also designed to be used for other purposes, like a summer movie night or farmers market.
[Photo: courtesy Grain Collective]
During storms, rain from nearby streets is channeled through pipes into bioretention areas beneath the basketball courts. The courts, which are roughly three feet deep, also can hold up to a foot of water in areas and then slowly release it. Most of the stored water seeps underground in the 48 hours after a storm. If the subsurface storage is full, a valve allows the rest of the water to overflow to the sewer only when there’s capacity.
The inspiration came from similar designs in Europe, including a “watersquare” in Rotterdam that functions as public space most of the time but captures water in heavy storms. The projects are an investmentthe first system at South Jamaica Houses cost around $5 millionbut could help prevent more costly damage.
[Photo: courtesy Grain Collective]
When planning first began, the city was thinking about long-term resilience. “At the time, we had not really experienced these kinds of extreme rains that we’ve seen over the past few years,” says Watson. “And over the course of time as this project has been developed, the context has totally changed.” The city has now seen storms like Hurricane Ida, in 2021, where extreme, sudden rain caused severe flooding and killed 11 people living in basement apartments. Ida showed the danger is real and urgent, underscoring the need for projects like the new courts.
Now, New York City is moving forward with more of the infrastructure at other public housing around the city. At a complex called Jefferson Houses, a new playground under construction uses permeable pavers to channel rainwater into underground storage tanks. Another basketball court is set to begin construction at Clinton Houses, and other projects are in the design phase now at four other sites.
