Planning and Housing
Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City (forthcoming book)
Author: Liz Koslov
LCI scholar Liz Koslov’s book Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City is an ethnographic account of community-organized retreat from the coast in New York City after Hurricane Sandy. The book, under advance contract with the University of Chicago Press, highlights Dr. Koslov’s examination of the social impacts of buyouts, a form of property acquisition in which houses and lots are purchased from willing sellers with future development prohibited.
See the related article The Case for Retreat in Public Culture.
Authors: Liz Koslov and Kathryn McConnell
Funder: Ziman Center for Real Estate Faculty Research
The authors lay out a research agenda to critically evaluate managed retreat – the intentional relocation of built infrastructure away from hazardous areas – as an adaptive response to wildfire.
Authors: Alessandra Jerolleman, Elizabeth Marino, Nathan Jessee, Liz Koslov, Chantel Comardelle, Melissa Villarreal, Daniel de Vries, Simon Manda
This book examines the use of relocation and resettlement processes in the U.S. as a means of responding to climate change. It argues that certain contradictions in property law diminish the usefulness of relocation as a successful strategy.
Researchers: C.J. Gabbe, Jamie Suki Chang, Morayo Kamson, and Euichan Seo
Funder: Santa Clara University Environmental Justice and the Common Good Research Grant
In this study, the researchers identified where unhoused residents in Santa Clara County were disproportionately exposed to heat and how they coped. They found that unhoused participants favored staying in places where they had more stability but these locations tended to have less access to shade and water, thus they faced difficult trade-offs.
Authors: Alan Barreca, R. Jisung Park, and Paul Stainier
Evidence suggests that households adapt to hot weather by employing energy-intensive technologies, such as air conditioning. Ensuing energy expenses might cause some low-income households to incur insurmountable energy debt and eventually become disconnected due to non-payment. This study examines this possibility using electricity use and disconnection data for 300,000 low-income households from California 2012–2017. It finds that each additional day with a maximum temperature of 95 °F causes electricity expenses to increase by 1.6% in the current billing period, and the relative risk of disconnection to increase by 1.2% 51–75 days later. In the context of climate change, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates the average risk of disconnection would increase by 12% if today’s weather resembled projected weather for the 2080–2099 period.
Authors: Gregory Pierce, C.J. Gabbe, and Annabelle Rosser
This study analyzes the risk of extreme heat and wildfires on households living in manufactured housing, such as mobile homes, in California. The authors find that these households face consistently higher exposure to extreme heat and wildfires.
Researchers: C.J. Gabbe, Evan Mallen, and Alexander Varni
The researchers find that households in detached single-family homes have the lowest heat risk and multifamily renters have the highest heat risk. AC availability is a major contributing factor and there are heat risk disparities for households in neighborhoods with larger proportions of Hispanic and Asian residents.
Researchers: Liz Koslov, Alexis Merdjanoff, Elana Sulakshana, Eric Klinenberg
This article presents data from individuals who opted either to rebuild or relocate with the help of a voluntary home buyout after Hurricane Sandy. Findings show those who lived in buyout-eligible areas and relocated were significantly less likely to report worsened stress than those who rebuilt in place.
Author: Kian Goh
Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and exclusionary actions. In this book, Kian Goh examines climate change response strategies in three cities—New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam—and the mobilization of community groups to fight the perceived injustices and oversights of these plans.
Researchers: Eric Klinenberg, Malcolm Araos, Liz Koslov
This article reviews research on trends brought on by the climate crisis: (a) compounding and cumulative disasters, infrastructure breakdown, and adaptation; (b) intensifying migration and shifting patterns of settlement; and (c) transformations in consumption, labor, and energy.
UCLA Researchers: Holly Jean Buck, Peter Kareiva, Liz Koslov, Will Krantz, Edward A. Parson
This paper examines examples of ‘stopgap measures’ from wildfire risk management, hydrochlorofluorocarbon regulation and Colorado River water management and introduces an analytical framework to assess stopgaps.
Authors: C.J. Gabbe and Gregory Pierce
This study examines whether Californians living in subsidized housing are more vulnerable to extreme heat than those living in unsubsidized housing. The researchers find that subsidized housing is disproportionately located in census tracts at the intersection of high projected extreme heat days (in 2040s), heat-sensitive populations, and barriers to adaptation. These findings indicate the need for targeted housing and land use policy interventions to reduce heat vulnerability.
Authors: C.J. Gabbe, Gregory Pierce, and Efren Oxlaj
This study finds that subsidized housing is less likely than other housing types to be in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. However, the magnitude of the overlap between vulnerable households and the WUI, which includes households in over 140,000 subsidized units, justifies further research and policy action.
Researcher: Liz Koslov
This article examines temporal conflicts (remapping, rezoning, and “at risk” designations) through a case of disputed risk mapping in New York City. While maps are key to rendering the risks of climate change vivid and local, their use as technologies of governing adaptation produces its own contested effects.
