MICHAEL KIMMELMAN / NEW YORK TIMES – The city of Hoboken, N.J., once a marshy outcropping that the Lenape inhabited only seasonally, hugs the Hudson River. Three-quarters of it occupies a flood plain. It is, in other words, a water magnet. Some scientists have forecast that, with rising seas, a big chunk of Hoboken will be Atlantis by 2100.

But for more than a decade this city of some 60,000 residents has been trying to thwart fate — and it is making progress …