New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has allocated US$170m (€149m, £118m) of the city’s budget for 2017 on climate resiliency projects, including construction of Bjarke Ingels Group's leisure-oriented storm barrier The Dryline.

The money will be used to create the stormwater management infrastructure required for the Lower Manhattan project – a 12 km-long high-water barrier incorporating public space with parks, seating, bicycle shelters, sports facilities and skateboard ramps.

Elevated embankments, pop-up sea walls deployed during storms and salt-resistant vegetation will all be used to make the area more resilient to future flood events.

The protective system will form a ribbon around the southern tip of Manhattan, from West 54th Street South to The Battery and up to East 40th Street.

The Dryline – previously known as the BIG-U and officially named the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project – has received US$335m (€294m, £234m) from the federal government, with construction on the first 9km stretch is scheduled to begin next year.

Flood barriers for Lower Manhattan have been proposed a number of times over the last couple of decades, but the need was brought into sharp focus by the flooding which accompanied Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when a devastating four-metre storm surge caused more than US$19bn (€16.6bn, £13.1bn) worth of damage.

The Dryline was developed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in collaboration with Rebuild by Design – a federally-funded initiative which is part of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

BIG are working with a substantial design and engineering team, including One Architecture, Starr Whitehouse, James Lima Planning + Development, Level Infrastructure, Burohappold, Arcadis, Green Shield Ecology, Aea Consulting, Project Projects and the School Of Constructed Environments At Parsons.

Could BIG's Dryline be New York's next High Line?