Surrounded as it is by three sides of water, San Francisco has always seemed to us a particularly precarious place to live. Okay, so it's not just the water... it's also the fault lines and the low elevation level combined with that whole global warming thing, if you must know the paranoid truth. Perhaps we'll be able to rest easier now knowing that the heroic architects, ecologists and engineers of the world are hard at work creating a plan to prevent our city's eminent demise, or at least that's what the results of the Rising Tides Competition would have us believe. Hosted by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Comission, the contest asked for ideas from such civic-minded individuals on how to respond to rising sea levels in the Bay Area and beyond. The six winning entries included proposals for creating a giant inflatable dam under the Golden Gate Bridge and using a "ventillated" levee to divert tides into micro-bay estuaries. We're not sure if these ideas eased our minds or gave us more reason to fret, but they're fascinating, nonetheless. You can see all 130 entries on display now at the Ferry Building through July 19th.

Via Fast Company