Resilient Cities in a Changing World AMPS | City, University of London Page 2 cultural, or job displacement due to individual, market, or government intervention, often in the form of investment.10 Keenan, Gumber, and Hill proposed a three pathways theory of CG, showing how climate change impacts may drive investment and settlement patterns.11 Pathway One is investment choices, for example, development in areas of lower risk. Pathway Two is increased consumer cost burdens, for example, due to repairs, higher insurance premiums, or climate adaptation costs. Pathway Three is public resilience investments, for example, storm surge infrastructure, greening, or even broader resilience efforts that drive up the property value. I propose an expansion of the pathways to acknowledge additional factors. CG Pathway One: Superior Investment Developers’ investment patterns may contribute to CG. After Hurricane Katrina, which damaged 70 percent of New Orleans’ occupied housing stock, the influx of post-disaster investment was associated with further or permanent displacement.12 Only 57 percent of the city’s Black population returned, and as rebuilding efforts drove up housing prices, the ability of residents to return to the city split along racial and economic lines.13 In Miami, areas protected from flooding may be targeted for investment and experience more rapid real property price appreciation than other areas, while lower, flooding-prone elevations may be less attractive and fail to keep pace in price appreciation.14 Scholars debate whether Miami gentrification stems from rational climate impact investment behaviors and other market forces, such as a steady march of development outward from downtown, escalating property values, and insufficient housing and resident protections.15 This project underlines the idea that private investment may also be influenced by public policy. CG Pathway Two: Cost Burden Climate change impacts of extreme heat and flooding add disparate housing-related cost burdens, also recognized as a pathway to climate gentrification.16 Cost burdens are distributed unevenly. For example, higher-income households tend to pay less for utilities while consuming more energy per capita and square foot due to greater energy efficiency.17 Low-income households are more likely to be under- or uninsured as homeowners or renters.18 Homes of lower-income households are more likely to have moisture and mold due to flooding, storm-related and higher-energy demand power outages, and damage due to drought-related wildfires and storms.19 Such expenses impact communities financially. However, this paper explores additional sociocultural cost burdens. CG Pathway Three: Resilience Investment and Intervention Resilience scholarship examines population displacement arising from conflict and war, development and infrastructure construction, disasters, and crises, including environmental factors such as climate change.20 Keenan and colleagues’ third CG pathway embraces climate resilience or sustainability investment associated with rising property values and displacement pressures. Yet resilience policy may undermine community resilience.21 A growing body of academic literature and activism identifies communities put at risk by resilience measures that retrench historically exclusionary, extractive, racist or classist policies.22 Community resilience is compromised, not only by disasters and demographic and social factors, but also by the concentration of power, land, and resources; voter disenfranchisement and disruptive politics; forced relocation and exposure to hazards.23 This paper suggests expanding this pathway to include policy and planning interventions.
