prepared for work for this show:The Rundown with Robin Thede on BET Game of Homes https://youtu.be/ImxXTp96E1I
South Florida elevation map showing vulnerability to sea level rise
The CLEO Institute
organized for climate education and action has been holding community town hall meetings in
neighborhoods affected by climate change gentrification
Report on Liberty City meeting:
2016_CLEO_LibertyCity_Climate_Forum_Report.pdf
Map prepared for Little Haiti community meeting:
Little Haiti Area Map
The idea of this map is to give community members data on sea level rise and gentrification they can
work with block by block in their own neighborhoods. Probably the most important graphic is
the one that shows the percentage of rental housing in blocks. Rental housing at higher elevations
is a prime candidate for conversion to expensive housing local residents cannot afford.
At FIU we have been doing this kind of mapping for a number of years, showing how vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change varies across an urban landscape shaped by locating of people determined by racial segregation, waves of immigration, and suburban sprawl (poster 2010 mapping methodology). Segregation was particularly important because it determined who lived where on the high ground that was settled first after 1900, the high ground that is now so desireable with sea level rise. The painful history of this has been brilliantly documented in N.D.B. Connolly's A World More Concrete and illustrated up to the present in the case of Liberty Square in this documentary (to video).
To study and map the real estate effects of sea level rise we have to be able to model the baseline of why neighborhoods differ so much
in housing prices. On the high ground
this old map
still explains most of the spatial statistical variance.
Miami area climate change gentrification has been discussed recently in these articles and reports:
In the New Tropic:
https://thenewtropic.com/climate-change-gentrification/
https://thenewtropic.com/miami-climate-change-women-color/;
this article in Climatewire carried by Scientific American,
and in a three-part series in The Root, Color of Climate:
Climate gentrification in Little Haiti
Is climate change gentrifying Miami?
Color of climate meet a power player in Miami's fight against climate gentrification
What is now discussed as climate gentrification is a current manifestion of South Florida's long history of social injustice. All South Florida will now pay a heavy price as that history's result in a speculation-based economy and lack of workforce housing present "a sustained, growing drag on the broader regional economy, including stunting new business and job creation, hurting young workers and talent, even in high-skill occupations, and limiting the County’s plans to diversify and strengthen its economic structure." (p. 8 of this report: FIU-MetroCenter_Prosperity_Initiatives_Feasibility_Study.pdf). For this reason the South Florida urban area may become an area of of shrinking population and accelerating economic decay far sooner than sea level rise drives people away. This report presents alternatives that must be considered no matter how politically difficult.