2022 Spring Issue - 87

OUTLOOK2022
strength, or the stability provided by having a large
number of Fortune 500 companies, or other headquarters
to rebuild and bring people back to the area
after the event. " And, of course, the people most at
risk are also often the least able to relocate.
" How we currently invest in climate protection
infrastructure unfortunately often defaults to the asset
value, " Swett says. " It just makes people look at
protecting a downtown commercial core rather than
public housing in other places. "
The average home price in New Orleans rose 46
percent between 2005 and 2015. The city demolished
a number of public housing developments, leaving
the city with 3,200 fewer public housing units than
before Hurricane Katrina.
Although the population of New Orleans has
returned to pre-Katrina levels, the demographics have
changed: Blacks represented 75 percent of the city's
residents in 2000, but whites represented 71 percent
of the population in 2019. Some say this is a prime
example of climate gentrification.
Keenan has been tracking the phenomenon of
climate gentrification, which he describes as capital's
shifting zone of preferences. This can manifest in the
three following ways:
* In the superior investment pathway, capital
shifts from high-risk areas to lower-risk areas.
* In the cost burden pathway, increased insurance
costs and taxes drive lower earners out and only the
wealthy can remain in the area.
* And in the resilience investment pathway,
making engineering improvements increases housing
demand and thus prices and drives out the people
the changes were intended to protect.
" Anywhere that you have climate risk being capitalized
into the market, you'll see a shakedown of the
geography of risk, and capital will follow, " Keenan
says. He has long predicted that northern cities such
as Duluth, Minnesota, and Buffalo, New York, will
become climate havens.
Taylor points to the example of Miami Beach, a
high-risk community with high-value real estate and
high-income residents.
" They're already spending millions to keep the
roads dry. But where do the people who work in
Miami Beach live? " he asks. Less wealthy parts
of Miami cannot fund climate mitigation efforts
at the same scale using the same financial tools.
" Community-level climate vulnerability and resilience
are fundamental to understanding the potential for
migration within or between markets. "
Managed Retreat and Building Barriers
Moving people out of harm's way has long been a
component of climate migration, Siders explains.
Managed retreat is a strategy that some communities
pursue to move individual homes, critical infrastructure,
or entire settlements to areas less at risk.
In Indonesia, the capital city of Jakarta recently
ranked first on a list of climate-threatened global
cities. Rising sea levels and flooding, in tandem with
earthquakes and tsunamis, are an ongoing threat to
its 10 million residents.
Knowing this, Indonesia is building a new government
capital in the jungle of East Kalimantan on
the island of Borneo. Building the 990-square-mile
(2,564 sq km) city, called Nusantara, is expected to
cost $34 billion and last through 2045. An estimated
1.5 million civil servants will move with the relocated
government.
Of course, not every municipality can take such
drastic measures. Fortifying sea walls and reshaping
coasts, while still expensive, is more often in play in
the United States.
The U.S. coastline is expected to rise as much in
the next 30 years as it did in the past century, according
to the National Ocean Service. The 2022 Sea Level
Last year, the World
Bank estimated that
climate change could
cause 216 million
people around the world
to relocate within their
own country over the
next 30 years.
SPRING 2022
URBAN LAND
87
SHUTTERSTOCK
2022 Spring Issue

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2022 Spring Issue
