This is a multi-part series, see Part 1 for a snippet of background and Part 2 for a discussion of regional issues.

I ended Part 2 stating that the path of the last century has preferred big – big business, big projects, big ideas – and has eroded diverse, distributed, and dynamic systems. This trend is evident in technology, where fewer and fewer players are controlling a larger part of the market. While those players used to appear benevolent, grave privacy and security concerns have surfaced with most users trapped due to our reliance on their growing centralized ecosystems. Similar trends should be in recent memory, big banks in particular, whose size and growing services blurred previous lines between investments and securities and threatened the financial system. These are examples of concentration and bigness, which breed fragility.

“The Economy of Cities” by Jane Jacobs is required reading to make many of the connections I focus on here. (see also Cities and the Economic Development of Nations: An Essay on Jane Jacobs’ Contribution to Economic Theory) While not an economist, Jacobs presents a series of case study cities whose economies have collapsed following significant concentration into single industries. Silicon Valley is on its way to future collapse following this paradigm. Concentration on a limited industry disadvantaging the other industries that make a city function creates a fragile system. At present, Silicon Valley relies on a concentrated talent pool of programmers. This skillset, however, has been the target of every city and region essentially across the planet, aiming to create a local industry. Over time the tech sector has become more reliant upon distributed datacenters and distributed computing, so there is little reason to remain concentrated aside from a concentrated talent pool for the industry giants. Given the housing conditions in the Bay Area, this is a perfect setup for failure.

As industries have avoided distribution and diversification, so have our cities. Presently those places most impacted by housing affordability shortages are cities with powerful economies. The economic development mindset has broadly assumed that cities cannot grow their own powerful economies, rather they must engage in incentive wars to attract big industrial players. Few stop to think about where those big players got their start: locally, solving local problems and branching out from there. Rather than feeling impoverished for not owning the top industry of today, cities should concentrate on creating supportive environments within which their residents can innovate. We’ve always made cities this way, until we forgot how to make cities.

The US is littered with small towns and cities, currently ignored by our vision of a productive economy. Many of these places were established on the basis of distribution using the systems most efficient at the time, typically water or rail. Others were based upon agricultural production and distribution or material extraction and refining. As technologies changed, these places which were limited in their economic diversity have languished. Yet revolution is afoot in many such places, typically mid-sized cities which have begin to revive locally grown economies. Rather than centralize our population into a dozen mega-cities, we should consider the opposite – our ability to diversify and distribute.

Big cities have limits. While they are often an efficient means of leveraging economic growth, their attractiveness leads to problems with affordability, power demands, distribution of food, and handling of waste products. But I don’t suggest that we do away with big cities, rather that we aim to have more, somewhat smaller big cities. By proactively diversifying and distributing our economy, and practicing Jacobs’ import replacement theory, we can increase our strength and resiliency. In our climate-driven future, there are few places safe from potential disaster. In fact many of our powerhouse cities are located along the coasts. With the unpredictability of our future climate, it would be a mistake to go all-in on any region.

While we could start from scratch building new places, reviving many of those places that have fallen behind in recent decades is a more responsible mission. In fact this is happening independently, albeit slowly. Akron, Ohio’s refugee resettlement program has created a new, thriving local economy, reversing the city’s decades of decline (https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/welcome-to-akron/). Similarly, we can establish thriving, local economies by helping people who have to move due to housing costs, climate change, and a host of other issues. Doing so increases our overall wealth, productivity, and resiliency. It also allows us to correct a host of public health problems due to both physical living conditions and depression associated with a lack of self-worth.

Climate strife provides an opportunity to re-establish a dynamic and distributed economy, and those physical manifestations of economy in the form of settlement patterns. However, we shouldn’t wait for the increasing impact of climate change to initiate change. Structural economic and physical change is possible, change has happened, and change can lead us to a better, more resilient and fulfilling future.

This is a multi-part series, see Part 1 for a snippet of background on the problem.

I began the last part considering my regular view of the US from the air. For the most part it is unsettled or agricultural land. Villages and towns pop up all over, usually following water or rail, occasionally unprompted in agricultural areas. They follow relatively linear natural and economic systems, harking back to the great work of John Reps on planning in the American West. Generally, big and medium cities cluster along the coasts, the Mississippi River and its’ tributaries, and outliers like Chicago and Atlanta which grew as rail hubs. Not much has changed since World War II.

The past century of growth and settlement, in the US and across the world, is a historical anomaly. In our daily work at DPZ, we endlessly confront the status-quo: unwilling to change and convinced that the current way of doing things is rational, safe, and improving with each silo’ed, ignorant new regulation. But the system we all live and work in was designed as a reaction to a human history which resulted in the atrocities of WW2. The atrocities haven’t stopped. And the system has failed to deliver a future that is rational, efficient, or safe. The last century is a failed experiment. For more on the suburban experiment, read and support Strong Towns. From here on I’ll assume familiarity with the failures of the suburban experiment; our increasing poverty, social isolation, obesity, and disease.

Critique of New Urbanists typically suggests that we want to return to some prior time when we consider life to be better. This is a fallacy. Increases in social liberalism have been significant, important, and must continue to make change and gain momentum. Technological change, access to education, and a myriad of other opportunities have certainly been generally positive. But the suburban pattern of growth has been a cancer thrust upon society. Continuation of this pattern is simply not an option if we want a future. Unfortunately for every house or apartment in historic areas and traditional, human-centric developments is matched by thousands of new houses in suburban areas. This pattern increases future climate threat and erodes society.

Climate migration presents an opportunity to change patterns of development and correct issues of social isolation, increased disease, and re-balance economic systems to benefit a society more broadly. To extract social benefit from this environmental tragedy, we must return to responsible regional planning before major migration begins. Should we take the normal route and wait, current patterns will continue, perpetuating growing metropoles and mega-regions. The default setting is ignorant of regional watersheds, arable soils, the suburbanization of poverty, and the increasing wealth disparity.

Preservation of viable agricultural land is a central threat resulting from climate migration. The problem is clear: mild climates are best suited for agriculture and most desirable to humans, yet they are, and will be, limited. In regions dominated by successful agriculture, farm owners are keen to protect their future ability to develop their property. At some point, subdividing agricultural land into, typically, 5-acre estates is more profitable than continuing to operate the farm. This is the classic property rights vs. planning issue. A few years ago we saw a last minute defeat in limiting agricultural subdivision to 20 acres or greater in New Mexico, where the 5 acre allowance was retained. In other instances, we’ve aimed at allowing rural growth through a system that creates new towns rather than subdivisions, and retains some portion of agricultural lands in perpetuity. Future regional planning must grapple with this issue to preserve arable land yet accommodate sufficient and equitable growth.

Beyond food source preservation, directing regional growth patterns affects our ability to mitigate the ongoing greenhouse feedback cycle. Architecture 2030 has made clear the need and ability to change the energy use paradigm in buildings. Yet tying land use and transportation to health and climate change mitigation has not been broadly successful. And where this has been successful, its implementation has been slow and flawed. California exemplifies this condition where state-wide legislation has been easily side-stepped by big suburban home builders and local municipalities lack both technical skills and political will to enact meaningful local policy. I refrain from extolling the virtues of compact and connected settlements patterns in the realms of health and social support systems as the research here is clear and overwhelming. But another aspect of social support will be important – the ability of communities to act in semi-autonomous governance (see Andres Duany’s subsidiarity theory). Beyond health and social reasons, compact and connected development is more efficient for transportation, infrastructure, and energy management. While the post-2008 recession saw an increase in regional planning with the HUD-EPA-DOT partnership, that has since been dissolved and regional planning had all but disappeared.

To reintroduce regional planning to the US consciousness, we must consider two major land mines: preservation of choice and increasing income disparity. Many affluent people assume that planning will reduce choice by requiring people to live in small apartments while many poor and working class people assume that planning will result in increased cost and displacement. There are valid reasons for these assumptions on both sides. We can accommodate significant growth and avoid ultra-urbanization while also avoiding displacement; this requires distributed and diverse growth. But it also necessitates understanding and confronting systemic issues beyond growth patterns. Manipulation of market dynamics to benefit a specific portion of the population is the greatest of these systemic issues. Luckily these issues are gaining public scrutiny, but change is not likely to be quick or comprehensive. Until most of these issues are addressed, markets will continue to skew towards unsustainable development patterns and increasing displacement of communities of color as well as poor households.

Assumptions of growth and opportunity is a blind spot in our current economic model, which has adverse physical consequences. The path of the last century has preferred big – big business, big projects, big ideas. Jane Jacobs’ most important text, “The Economy of Cities”, warns of the consequences of big thinking. Changing this paradigm is a requirement of future sustainability and equity. Diverse, distributed, and dynamic systems are the most resilient and provide the greatest economic opportunity in aggregate. Climate strife provides an opportunity to re-establish a dynamic and distributed economy, and those physical manifestations of economy in the form of settlement patterns.

Changing our assumptions of the economic model unlocks our future resilience. More on this to come.

I often find myself flying across the US, choosing the window seat because its more comfortable and also more interesting. While this is a consequence of moving across the country, where much of my professional work remains in the Midwest and East, it provides a lot of fodder for thought about humans, settlements, natural systems, economics, and climate change. In fact, climate change is part of the reason I moved.

As an early-wave climate migrant, I’ve spent considerable time thinking about the looming problems and opportunities of the coming climate migration. I’ll touch more on the problems and opportunities at a later time; the subject of migration and climate refugees requires more immediate attention and understanding. Being in the US, we have few connections to global patterns of migration and strife. But most others outside our boarders are well aware of the relationship between climate, strife, access to food and water, rising seas, and patterns of temperature and seasons. Remaining willfully ignorant doesn’t serve anybody.

In the US, we find ourselves beyond ignorance, residing in the realm of lies and fear. In my professional career, in Florida, I have directly witnessed regional entities manipulating interpretations of IPCC research in order to keep residents in the dark and not spook the real estate market. And that was before Rick Scott was governor, who outlawed talk of climate change and sea level rise in the state house. Clearly there are reasons why I left South Florida and the state entirely. Here are some inconvenient facts. The IPCC estimates don’t account for increased ice sheet melt which is all over the news currently. Areas close to the Everglades are actually lower than most coastal properties along the limestone ridge, which is where all the new housing is being built. Some key aquifers have been poisoned by sewage for years and now nuclear waste. Sugar farms continue to block the natural flow of Lake Okeechobee which should flow into the Everglades and recharge the primary aquifer, which is too low to hold out salt water intrusion. Instead the lake is forced out two primary rivers which caused the recent catastrophic algal blooms due to fertilizer runoff from farms. During the 6 years that I lived on Miami Beach, the rise of water was a regular experience. In fact the City of Miami Beach has had to work on its own, without the state, to address climate issues, including raising West Avenue. And the populous remains ignorant. Discussion is blocked in part due to fears of effects on real estate value. But this is not just about Florida.

Florida is symptomatic or more significant issues of ignorance, lies, and fear. In a recent discussion about the Paradise fires in California, I finally heard some rational conclusions: perhaps we shouldn’t build back here. This high-profile disaster is just one of thousands of disasters occurring across the US, not counting elsewhere in the world. A colleague, Laura Clemmons, who works in the world of FEMA grants and disaster recovery has been making noise for years to this end. We’re wasting incredible amounts of money building back either in places that don’t have a future or in patterns that are not sustainable. Another colleague, Jessica Millman, suggested that real estate agents be required to disclose future disaster and climate risk. Unfortunately, there is no honest and broad conversation, planning, or action. As usual, the most significantly impacted populations now and in the future are those already disenfranchised.

Of course it doesn’t have to be this way. But that takes forethought and planning. A new lens on regions, economies, and ecologies. Subjects of further discussion.

For now, I want to discuss three types of climate migrants: the able and aware, the affluent and ignorant, and the refugee. I fall into the first category of the able and aware. We pay attention to the real threat of climate change, and understand that it is now and it doesn’t stop in 2050 or 2100 or whatever dates are used to peg our estimates. We have the means to move and are doing just that; taking up residence in places that are more climate secure with good economic opportunity. Once more people are aware, good places to land will become increasingly expensive. This able and aware group will grow quickly as the reality of climate change becomes increasingly apparent.

The affluent and ignorant are generally unaware or unconcerned, and have the means to relocate as needed. For them, the burden of climate change may be significant, but they don’t have to fear relocation difficulty. Despite rising costs in more climate secure areas, new housing will be built and will generally be attainable. However many have not yet considered the inability to sell their homes, if they have considered future climate at all, which may result in downward social mobility. This group is generally concerned with business, leaving little time to consider future implications of climate change. And many, despite their educational backgrounds, are willingly ignorant of climate science. But they’ll get along alright.

Future climate refugees represent the largest portion of the US and world population. While some may have the ability to move presently, an already difficult daily life leaves little time for future planning. Many rely upon their extended families and communities for support. We found in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina that most will not or can not leave that extended support system. When there is no other choice than move, they are likely to be some of the last; housing opportunities near economic opportunity will be scarce. And where housing is available, it is likely to be substandard and within car-dominant areas, perpetuating the cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement. We should all be concerned for the future of this population; their future is our collective future.

If we continue on our current path, we are doomed. At this point, mitigating climate change is doomed. We must make changes to our development patterns, energy systems, food systems, and daily habits. But this is in order to change the climate change trajectory starting at 2050 or 2100, not between now and then. Making these changes remains critical to the future of our species. We also must begin planning for the inevitable change we have ahead of us.

We must adapt.

Nothing escapes the need for adaptation. Certainly where we live and how we build must adapt. But our economic lens must as well. We find ourselves stuck with inaction as people fear the financial implications of changes required for our survival. Ironically the fear and inaction will result in greater financial destruction than action today.

Planning ahead is our greatest hope. More on hope and change soon.