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Humans have been adapting to increasing sea level for a long time, (all of Human existence).
Seattle raised much of the downtown area by up to 30 feet in the early 1900's by making the first floors the basements,
and creating a new street level, Something like this could happen in NYC, if the needs arise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
It likely would not hurt to build flood walls around the subway entrances now, because raising sea level or not,
NYC will get another Hurricane and another storm surge.
I say if, because in spite of all the rhetoric, the sea level in NYC has been falling for about 8 years.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
One can interpret the chart as falling for the last eight years, but that's coming from an extreme high circa 2010. Take away that high point, and I see an increase over the last eight years, which is backed by a slow increase of the past decades.
A lot of NYC is already underground. An increase in sea level will increase the pressure on the infrastructure holding the water back. A few centimeters extra is not a lot of extra pressure, but extend that over the entire underground, there will be more leaks to deal with. And given that a lot of that underground is many decades old, it will be more difficult to maintain that underground.
Seattle is a good example of humanity making decisions as conditions change. I lived in High River, Alberta for four years, a town noted for frequent floods. After the big flood of 2013, the town decided to raze certain neighborhoods rather than rebuild them. If sea levels are rising, I'm sure the coastal areas will adapt.