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‘Climate Gentrification’ Will Deepen Urban Inequality

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Posted By: Richard Florida December 28, 2018

A new study investigates the intersection of climate change and real estate, and finds that higher elevations bring higher values.

It’s no surprise that a list of places most at risk from climate change and sea-level rise reads like a Who’s Who of global cities, since historically, many great cities have developed near oceans, natural harbors, or other bodies of water. Miami ranks first, New York comes second, and Tokyo, London, Shanghai, and Hong Kong all number among the top 20 at-risk cities in terms of total projected losses.Cities in the less developed and more rapidly urbanizing parts of the world, such as Ho Chi Minh City and Mumbai, may experience even more substantial losses as a percentage of their total economic output. Looking out to 2050, annual losses from flooding related to climate change and sea-level rise could increase to more than $60 billion a year.But global climate change poses another risk for cities: accelerated gentrification. That’s according to a new study by Jesse Keenan, Thomas Hill, and Anurag Gumber, all of Harvard University, that focuses on “climate gentrification.” While still emerging and not yet clearly defined, the theory of climate gentrification is based, the authors write, “on a simple proposition: [C]limate change impacts arguably make some property more or less valuable by virtue of its capacity to accommodate a certain density of human settlement and its associated infrastructure.” The implication is that such price volatility “is either a primary or a partial driver of the patterns of urban development that lead to displacement (and sometimes entrenchment) of existing populations consistent with conventional framings of gentrification.”

The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, advances a simple “elevation hypothesis,” arguing that real estate at higher elevations in cities at risk for climate change and sea-level rise appreciates at a higher rate than elsewhere. It focuses on Greater Miami (defined as Miami-Dade County), the area of the country and of the world most at risk from climate change. The authors track the differential in values, between 1971 and 2017, of properties at different levels of elevation and risk from sea-level rise (based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey), while controlling for other factors. They draw from data on more than 800,000 property sales (from the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser’s Office), including information on property value, building size, year built, bed and bath counts, and tax-assessment values.The study finds considerable evidence of climate gentrification, and for the elevation hypothesis in particular. Properties at high elevations have experienced rising values, while those at lower elevations have declined in value. In fact, elevation had a positive effect on price appreciation in more than three-quarters of the properties and 24 of the 25 separate jurisdictions the authors examined. The study also found support for a secondary hypothesis, the “nuisance hypothesis,” which posits that price appreciation in lower-elevation places had not kept up with higher-elevation places since approximately 2000 due to nuisance flooding.
Generally speaking, the areas that had the strongest regression coefficients—that is, the places where elevation best predicted the change in real estate prices—are all along the coast and at the highest risk of flooding, as the graphic below shows. They include Key Biscayne, Miami Beach, and a number of exclusive island enclaves, as well as Sunny Islands and Golden Beach to the north.

But these positive associations spanned land-locked communities as well as coastal ones. In fact, more than half of the jurisdictions with positive correlations—13 out of 24—were landlocked. All of these have significant water exposure in the form of lakes and drainage canals. The largest jurisdiction in the sample, unincorporated Miami-Dade County, showed the lowest, but still positive, correlation.

(Courtesy of Keenan, Hill, and Gumber)

Climate gentrification typically occurs via three main pathways, according to the study.

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    By: Richard Florida

    Richard Florida is a co-founder and editor at large of CityLab and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is a university professor in the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a distinguished fellow at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.

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