Climate gentrification will be the latest plague for poorer urban households

Plans to #redevelop a rundown #neighbourhood that has for years occupied now much-sought after higher land in Miami highlights the risk that #climate #gentrification leads to poorer families being displaced. A documentary focused on one regeneration scheme that may point the way for other wealthy cities.

Miami in Florida, US, is in the crosshairs of the current climate emergency. According to the city’s government, by 2060 the sea level is projected to rise 14 to 34 inches — or as much as 0.9 metres — above the 1992 mean sea level. “Residents may experience flooding in their daily lives due to heavy rainfall, sometimes referred to as rain bombs, and seasonal high tides”. But those estimates were made in 2015 so the current outlook will doubtless be worse.

As coastal cities read the runes of climate change, households and property investors will start eying up land that will give them immunity from the rising water levels. One such site is Liberty Square, a historically Black neighbourhood in the north-west of the city three metres above sea level. In 2015, officials at Miami-Dade County unveiled a $74 million plans to raze and rebuild the estate of 709 housing units that then housed some 600 families or 2,000 people. None would be displaced and would be part of the new 1,900-home community.

Nine years on and just a third, or 200 families, have been housed in the new buildings while a chunk of the new leases have been taken by newcomers prepared to pay the market-level rates, according to a feature-length documentary that has aired by PBS in the US (although may not be watchable outside the US, sadly). More than 200, often low-income, Black families left after receiving housing vouchers to use on flats in the private market. As one resident tells the filmmakers: “When I was a child, my grandfather always was saying they're going to come take Liberty City because we don't flood.”

This is a human form of a phenomenon that academics and the media have called climate gentrification, the idea that climate change make some zones or streets more desirable and thus more valuable because of their relative immunity to its negative impacts. This might be because of its geographic qualities — higher ground, in plain English — or the resilience of the buildings. The rise in value will encourage developments that will be too expensive for the current residents.

An academic study into Miami-Dade county that likely coined climate gentrificationforecast (but which did not specifically look at Liberty Square) found that since 2000, prices had risen for areas with higher elevations and a faster rate than those closer to sea level. Another found that new green resilient infrastructure such as rain gardens, green roofs, and climate-proof parks tended to be concentrated in the wealthier and gentrified neighbourhoods and near to others that were in the process of gentrifying.

Finally, a study into post-Katrina New Orleans found a significant positive association between ground elevation and gentrification. Crucially the authors concluded that “high elevation, low-income, demographically transitional areas” were at highest risk for future climate gentrification, which would become key given the vulnerability of coastal cities to forecast likely flooding thanks to intense rainfall, coastal storms and rising sea levels.

The latter point is likely to be more relevant in European cities that may be less prone to flooding but have been more likely to embark on low-carbon development programmes. Here, urban planners target areas for redevelopment that have a low environmental performance and therefore also are more likely to be home to poorer households. The gentrification happens as either some households are forced to relocate because their home is demolished, while others will see their rents rise as owners of the renovated dwellings are able to charge higher rents or sales prices.

The potential for rising urban inequality and what academics call climate injustice, is immense.

The lesson for policymakers who care about such things is to make sure they take account of the relative wealthy and economic power of those affected and ensure they the community’s capacity of adapt is strengthened. That way they can address local climate risks, while supporting urban sustainability and curbing the risk of social inequalities as a result.