The Landfills of Boston

The Boston Harbor Association commissioned a study to look at the potential impact of sea level rise on potential storm surge, a la Sandy.  Here is the result for a 7.5 foot surge, reflecting the current 100 year storm flood of 5 feet with 2.5 feet thrown in for sea level increase:

The story points out an interesting similarity:

Now Boston must begin to contend with the reality that it could be even more vulnerable than New York to rising sea levels. Much of Boston was historically built on land filled in and created out of estuaries and wetlands, and the ocean itself. Logan International Airport was built on man-made land. So were many of the high-end residences in the city’s Back Bay neighborhood.
"It’s interesting when we actually look at the maps," says Vivien Li, the president of The Boston Harbor Association. "Where it would be flooded is where we filled in."
This historic map of Boston, from 1640, shows a peninsular city with a dramatically different shape, inside the outlines of Boston as we know it today (as Boston College professor Jeffrey Howe writes, the ensuing sequence of landfill projects "also helps explain some of the peculiarities of the modern urban landscape. Boston streets, laid out in the 17th and 18th century, followed a coastline which has moved and avoided hills which are no longer there.")

Boston in 1640, with the current land area outlined:

 I think this is pretty obvious.  These areas were only filled enough to get them far enough out of the water so they wouldn't flood very frequently.  This took a hell of a lot of work, and nobody can blame them for not building them even higher.  However, that probably won't be good enough for the medium-range future.