How Climate Gentrification Gets Ignored
The people of Miami share a history of escaping hardship. Cubans fled to Miami seeking refuge from the disruptive uprising of Fidel Castro throughout much of the late 20th century. Haitians, as well, found safety in Miami from the oppressive and brutal dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier in the 1970s and still find their way there today in search of economic opportunity. Today, the ability of these communities — in particular, communities of Haitians, Cubans, and other Latinx people — to remain in the place they call home faces a new and unprecedented challenge: climate gentrification.
While the concept of “climate gentrification” is new and largely under-discussed, it’s not very hard to understand. To many, it’s clear that — as climate change causes temperatures to warm, sea levels to rise, and natural disasters to occur more frequently — certain communities will become more uninhabitable. Considering the history of such natural disasters, one might be led to believe that underserved communities will be severely impacted while big cities with strong infrastructure go untouched. The possibility of climate refugees fleeing en masse to major cities is not an ignored topic as poorer communities around the world face the challenges of climate change head-on. What happens, however, when climate change comes to harm those supposedly privileged, untouchable cities? Where do those people go?
Privileged Access and Accounts
In analyzing this topic, it’s important to focus on how opposing groups in the context of climate gentrification are either positively or negatively affected by one group’s privileged access and accounts. In 2005, William R. Freudenburg wrote “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts: Toward a Socially Structured Theory of Resources and Discourses,” an incredibly useful analysis of how the disproportionate impacts of environmental harms are often ignored or misanalysed when systems of power use a “double diversion.” This “double diversion,” he says, comes from a tendency for strong social powers to utilize two of their privileges: privileged access and privileged accounts.
When Freudenburg refers to privileged access, he describes the way humanity tends to operate on the assumption that all people have an equal access to environmental resources around us. In reality, we know this isn’t true. Freudenburg specifically points to metal mining industries as a very clear-cut example. An average citizen, obviously, doesn’t have much of the capital or even physical ability to go mine their own metal. They depend on the mining industry to do that for them; thus, the mining industry has a privileged access to the environmental resources of metal and — one could argue — the land over the mines they get their metal from. Not only this, but the mining industry also has the privilege of deciding what to do with its pollutants (within legal restrictions). Regardless of the fact that toxic emissions may be limited by whatever pollution laws are put in place, the reality remains that any pollution released by a mining factory will have a stronger negative effect on the surrounding air, water, and land than on the actual ability of the factory to operate. Because of this, industries are doubly privileged in both their access to environmental resources and their avoidance of the negative consequences of their own pollution.
Freudenburg then refers to privileged accounts, in which he describes the way such industries and social institutions are able to frame these privileges in a positive light that goes largely unquestioned. There are various ways that such privileged systems can go about doing this, but their ability to do this is largely related to the way they seemingly contribute positively to the economy in important ways and their access to mass media (perhaps even another form of privileged access?) as they are able to ignore or lump together critics under one singular bad argument. Freudenburg points out how common it is to discuss environmental issues in a very broad sense rather than honing in on environmental privileges enjoyed by certain sections of the population. This is evidence of those with privilege being able to take control of the public narrative. The solution to shifting this narrative, then, may be to analyze environmental privileges rather than simply environmental issues more deeply.
A Background on Privileged Access to the Coastal Land of Miami
When people think of Miami, one of the first images that come to mind is no doubt its beaches. Miami’s beaches are a source of pride and — more importantly — real-estate value. Climate gentrification, however, shows developers moving away from beaches to higher-elevation land. This brings up an important question: how accessible was Miami’s coastal lands to the actual people of Miami in the first place? Did certain people have a privileged access to Miami’s beaches?
In 2015, researchers from the Wharton Risk Center in the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at El Paso sought out an answer to this exact question. They researched this topic as an environmental justice issue, but I find it useful as well as an example of privileged access. Rather than necessarily looking for an inability of black and brown Miami residents to gain easy access to public beaches (an environmental issue), they looked specifically for evidence of white privilege in public beach access (an environmental privilege). Ultimately, they found both. Out of the variety of demographics they modelled — including Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black, Colombian, Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican — Non-Hispanic Whites exhibited a significantly higher level of public beach access relative to all ethnic/racial groups. Not only that, but these Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic neighborhoods were more highly correlated with economic insecurity and instability. It’s important to note that this study did not single out a Haitian population. This is likely due to the fact that the study used census data for its population numbers, which fails to acknowledge Haitian people specifically for their shared Latin-American heritage despite not necessarily speaking a “Hispanic” language. Haitians were, then, most likely categorized under Non-Hispanic Black. The study shows that Non-Hispanic Black populations had slightly higher public beach access than Hispanic populations as a whole, but I would be willing to bet that Haitian populations show similar — if not lower — public beach access as Hispanic populations.
Seeing as Miami is a city known for its Hispanic and black Haitian community, this information begs a few questions. How did things get like this? Why do they stay like this? It’s easy to chalk things up to economic insecurity or to the fact that coastal land is historically higher value, but to truly understand why the black and brown people of Miami lack such privileged access one must understand a few forms of environmental gentrification.
Low-Carbon, Green, and Resilience Gentrification
The study of climate gentrification is not the only recent attempt at tying gentrification to environmental impacts. Other sociologists have recently begun analyzing other forms of gentrification related to the effects of climate change, in particular low-carbon, green, and resilience gentrification. By no means are these forms of gentrification the same as climate gentrification but understanding their processes and histories can provide some valuable insight and background into the process of climate gentrification.
These three kinds of gentrification are prevalent world-wide as the global community responds to climate change, especially as climate change has had particular negative effects on underserved communities. In 2018, researchers Stefan Bouzarovski, Jan Frankowski, and Sergio Tirado Herrero studied the effects of low-carbon gentrification. They found that a district called Letnica in the Polish city of Gdańsk has had its residents both directly forced out of their homes via the demolition of homes that can’t be retrofitted with new cleaner energy sources and indirectly priced out due to a general push to make their neighborhood more fuel-efficient and less costly to housing developers. In the same year, Kenneth A. Gould and Tammy L. Lewis studied resilience gentrification in Gowanus, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. After Hurricane Sandy, Gould and Lewis hoped there would be a wakeup call for New York City as a whole to move populations away from coastlands despite their aesthetic value. However, Gowanus was instead developed to be resilient to future flooding and climate disasters, raising the prices of housing and rent and thus pushing out community members of lower socio-economic status. In 2017, researchers Isabelle Anguelovski, James J. T. Connolly, Laia Masipc, and Hamil Pearsalld studied the effects of green gentrification in historically disenfranchised neighborhoods of Barcelona. They reconfirmed the unfortunate reality that private developers and the Municipality of Barcelona will build “green” spaces (parks, playgrounds, nature areas, etc.) in neighborhoods that are more “desirable” (especially waterfront neighborhoods) with no regard to the community living in those neighborhoods, causing the influx of new residents from the Global North with higher incomes and college educations. Less “desirable” neighborhoods, as well, are further underserved.
All of these forms of gentrification occur due to developmental choices forced on neighborhoods at the hands of government and private developers. Not only that, but they specifically force the residents of a neighborhood to move out of the way for development that is supposed to benefit them. The end result is that initiatives to make neighborhoods more green and sustainable end up resulting in worse results than if neighborhoods were instead left to take the brunt of the environmental hazards they already experience.
To refer back to the discussion on Miami public beach access, I would argue that two large reasons black and brown Miamians continue to lack privileged access to public beaches are green and resilience gentrification. As sea levels rise, Miami local governments and private developers have made consistent efforts to have two things: beautiful beaches and a beautiful coastal city that can both withstand the rising sea; they have the privileged access of ownership of the very land they aim to develop and the privileged account of simply wanting to better their neighborhoods. As beaches and parks have been developed along with the sea walls that surround them, the price to pay to live near Miami’s beaches has risen up to insane levels. The developers of Miami are discovering, however, that the effects of climate change cannot be mitigated endlessly. Eventually, they are the ones forced to move out.
Climate Gentrification Comes to Miami
Now is when we can understand exactly what climate gentrification is and how it’s working in Miami. As I argued earlier, as a result of ongoing systems of resilience and green gentrification in the coastal lands of Miami, more underserved communities consisting of black and brown residents tend to exist on high-elevation land in Miami. The clearest example of one of these communities is Little Haiti, which is a neighborhood known for its Haitian refugee and immigrant population and which exists on the highest elevated land in all of Miami-Dade County. It’s also the area with the highest number of renters rather than homeowners in all of Miami, according to a CBS News documentary made about ongoing climate gentrification in Little Haiti.
The largest climate related issue facing Miami right now is sea level rise, and as one might expect, it’s coastal lands that are being the most effected; not high-elevation inlands. This is having negative consequences on the value of homes and land near beaches in already incredibly noticeable ways. As recently as February 2018, Steven McAlpine and Jeremy Porter conducted a study analyzing just how much sea level rise has impacted real-estate losses and the local housing market as a whole. They found that, since 2005, approximately $465,554,000 had been lost in real-estate value solely due to tidal and road flooding. This amount is dwarfed by the total real-estate value of Miami as a whole, but as the effects of climate change worsen exponentially developers expect this value to worsen to greater and greater amounts. These losses aren’t only due to the flood damage itself, either. McAlpine and Porter note that more value will be lost as real-estate developers become more aware of this shrinking value and danger of flooding and find other places to develop, adding another mechanism which contributes to real-estate loss.
Now, if you were a real-estate developer and you were concerned about how rising sea levels were impacting your business, where might you think to relocate? The commonsense answer is higher-elevated land, but it isn’t just common sense, it’s already happening. In 2018, Harvard researchers Jesse M. Keenan, Thomas Hill, and Anurag Gumber conducted a study both confirming the existence of climate gentrification in Miami but also determining models for the pathways by which climate gentrification take place. They hypothesized three different potential pathways for climate gentrification to occur: superior investment based on elevation, increasing consumer cost-burdens, and resilience investments. Notice how these pathways relate to earlier mentioned systems of gentrification. The superior investment hypothesis would basically refer to what one might consider “normal” gentrification, that higher elevation land is simply considered a better investment as knowledge of rising sea levels becomes more well-known. Consumer cost-burdens refers to the increasing costs of dealing with flood damaging while resilience investments refer to the increasing costs of creating infrastructure that may prevent flood damage in the first place. Both of these are very reminiscent of resilience gentrification. The researchers found evidence to support each pathway hypothesis they came up with, indicating that the process by which climate gentrification occurs may be more complex and multi-layered than meets the eye. More importantly, however, the evidence for each of these pathways confirms that climate change has had a definite effect on gentrification occurring in Miami from lower to higher elevation lands. While interesting, the pathways of climate gentrification aren’t my main focus. I instead wish to analyze how such pathways are evidence of the privileged access and accounts real-estate developers hold over the people of neighborhoods like Little Haiti.
The Privileged Access and Accounts of Urban Development
As I’ve described all the various forms of gentrification that are explicitly tied to the various effects of climate change, a couple of similarities between them stand out to me. Mainly that the framing of these forms of gentrification implies they are being caused by the changing climate, but I find it important to make clear that this gentrification is being caused by those with the capital and social mobility to escape or defend against hardship.
It had already been shown earlier how Miami’s most privileged demographic — Non-Hispanic Whites with economic security — hold privileged access to Miami’s public beaches. At the same time, private developers too hold unchallenged privileged access to these areas as they are the ones producing hotels, mansions, seasonal beach houses, and so on, that help provide this privileged access for even more economically secure Non-Hispanic Whites. In no way would I imply that these private developers are contributing to sea-level rise in any way more significant than other polluting industries, but they do have privileged access to resources that allow them to both develop resilience structures against rising sea levels and begin buying out properties in Little Haiti at the same time. A home renter in Little Haiti doesn’t have that same privilege.
CBS News’ documentary “Rising Tide: Priced Out in Miami” provides a perfect example of this privileged power imbalance at work. A trailer park in Little Haiti was bought out in 2018 by Miami Soar Management Corp. Before their purchase, residents of the trailer park experienced ~$50 rent increases per year, resulting in one tenant’s rent rising from $245 to $500 per month between the years 2003 and 2018. Suddenly, after their purchase, the rent rose from $500 to $735 per month, a 47% increase in under one year. What is a sick, retired woman already struggling to pay rent meant to do when such a steep price increase comes? And importantly, what is the justification for such a price increase?
The same documentary shows perfectly how these developers use their own privileged accounts to justify their gentrification of Little Haiti. The reporter in the documentary interviews a co-founder of the Magic City Innovation District, a $1 billion residential and commercial complex that’s been built in the center of Little Haiti by a group of real-estate developers. The property this complex was built on was once a mobile home park for 40 working class families. The reporter asks the co-founder how he justifies entering Little Haiti as an outsider and causing nearby property values to rise 16% since 2014. He rejects the claim entirely, shifting the discussion to a claim that his development is meant to be a source of pride that brings people INTO the community (despite the fact one could argue that this is exactly what gentrification is). He argues that the Magic City Innovation District is meant to revitalize the economy of Little Haiti and celebrate the culture of Little Haiti.
The unfortunate thing is that his argument here could be rather easy to swallow. His claims are likely true, on the surface. The Magic City Innovation District will no doubt bring economic success to Little Haiti, and surely some aspect of the complex will seek to celebrate the culture of Little Haiti. This, however, is how privileged accounts take hold. Many of the residents already displaced by the construction of Magic City don’t get to be asked how they feel about their relocation until it’s too late. The documentary, thankfully, focuses more on the accounts of residents already being negatively affected by rising property prices. Developments similar to that of Magic City, however, continue to take hold on Little Haiti.
Conclusion
What makes Miami’s climate gentrification unique compared to the examples of environmental gentrification discussed in this essay? It’s easy to talk about these sociological concepts, ideas, and studies and find specific situations that help define them. Miami, however, seems like a perfect storm of what happens when all of these concepts clash together. Resilience and green gentrification — along with already existing social and economic inequalities — worked to provide real-estate developers and non-Hispanic Whites a privileged access to coastal lands. Climate change has begun to threaten this privileged access to economically desirable land, so these entities now use their economic and social capital to begin gentrifying higher-elevation lands (climate gentrification). The privileged access and accounts they’ve accumulated have allowed them the ability to continue resilience gentrification in their own neighborhoods while causing climate gentrification in neighborhoods like Little Haiti, leaving many residents with nowhere to go.
When this perfect storm of environmental sociological issues happens, it becomes increasingly difficult to analyze each of the moving parts. This confusion and chaos have a lot of negative outcomes as it only furthers the power of those with privileged access and accounts. There is no simple, singular answer to resolving such complex problems, but those with privileged accounts would like to have you believe otherwise. To them, the solution is boosting the economy of a neighborhood, building sea walls to avoid sea level rise, vaguely “celebrating a culture.” To even begin combatting this, it’s necessary to understand each of the moving parts so that each moving part can be attacked and resolved individually. Hopefully, we can work to dismantle unjust environmental privileges, not just vague environmental issues.
