‘Climate Gentrification’ Will Deepen Urban Inequality
“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.’”