i.e. is there one catastrophic event where everything is immediately flooded? (Similar to Katrina).
Or is the area just slowly flooded over decades? In which case, no one does anything? (i.e. the Sacramento scenario is hard to fathom in this scenario)
I suppose it would be like Katrina (New Orleans) or Sandy (New York), which of course un-flooded after the storm, but each time it floods, with the base sea level being higher than last time, it gets progressively worse until you just give up spending the money to reclaim the land and protect it from the next storm.
Maybe look into whatever it is they do in the Netherlands. A very large fraction of the entire country is just barely above sea level (or even below it in places).
60% of the population is below sea level, even. It's true that only 25% of the land area is below sea level (and another 25% less than 1 meter above it), but that happens to be the most densely populated area.
For example, if the sea were to spill over onto all below-sea-level land, Amsterdam would be an island, some 15 km off the new coastline. The Port of Rotterdam would still be there (25km offshore), but the rest of the city would disappear.
i.e. is there one catastrophic event where everything is immediately flooded? (Similar to Katrina).
Or is the area just slowly flooded over decades? In which case, no one does anything? (i.e. the Sacramento scenario is hard to fathom in this scenario)