Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Over 94 million Americans live in coastal counties.1 Despite the coast's scenic views and salty charm, more and more people are fleeing the coast as the sea engulfs their property and the cost of maintaining their ocean-view homes becomes too high.2 Those who can afford to escape rising sea levels and the accompanying floods flock to high ground, pushing out those who can no longer afford to stay.This is known as "climate gentrification," where those escaping the sea are gentrifying areas inland and causing displacement of long-term residents, usually minorities or members of impoverished communities.3 This note will discuss three types of policies commonly implemented to combat climate change and rising sea levelsprotection, accommodation, and retreat policiesand will explore how they contribute to climate gentrification.It will offer solutions to balance the influx of people inland.The concept of climate gentrification has been studied in Miami and the surrounding area.4 This note, however, will focus on climate gentrification as a national phenomenon, and use general policy proposals to portray how those policies effect this concept.Part II of this note gives a brief history of climate change and sea level rise, introduces climate gentrification, and how the two are related; it also introduces the governmental policies and regulations applied to combat climate change.Part III explores the three types of climate change mitigation policies, how well they work to protect property owners on the sea, and how 1 60 Million Live in the Path of Hurricanes, UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/coastal-county-population-rises.html(last visited April 5, 2019).
Author: Rakiah N. Bonjour
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3003411825