The no-parking signs no longer stood sentinel against cars. With the incoming tide and the rising of the water level up to a good three feet in the former parking lot, they had become anchor points for people to tie their canoes up against. It was one of the benefits of living in a former city, everybody agreed--the sheer prevalence of signs for parking and driving and light poles and all the infrastructure that used to be used when the city still remained above the water and everyone drove cars as a matter of habit, without thinking much about it. The overpasses remained dry spots, good for anchoring below and walking up to trade goods, or for those things that needed to be done on dry land, or could be done best there. The houses had mostly crumbled as their foundations rotted away, but some of the brick houses still stood, as did the stone, and in a few cases, their upper floors were even livable and safe. Careful inspections were needed, of course, but the best hotels were in former libraries--and usually the books still were, too, those that the custodians had not decided to be worth moving to the drylands as the waters encroached upon their city.


Inspiration: Photo of a flooded car park: http://www.flickr.com/photos/terry-and-nikon/12328347314/
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Setting. Also, I accidentally typed "fantasy" here, which is an interesting idea. Take a sci-fi trope and write it as fantasy.

William the Silent frowned when the stadtholders came before him with their complaints, but he saw the way that it would go. Their dikes were failing, one and all, and there was only one option before them that they saw: to buttress themselves against the world. His military advisors, chomping at the bit to actually fight a war and justify their positions, saw another option: invade the neighbors and force them to make space. The water level was rising, and there was no denying that soon the stadts would be drowned by the waters unleashed on them by the first worlds in their great industrial race. The Netherlands had contributed their share to that, of course, but it was a small share, surely not enough to justify them--

Inspiration: A history entry about William the Silent and the Netherlands' revolution. Of course, this is *not* intended to take place in that time.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Option 3: Waterworld!