America's cities are vying for a hot new title: best place to ride out the coming dystopia
Every American city has its charms and its flaws. Some boast of great barbecue, while others tout their proximity to sandy beaches. The country's vast size gives American families and businesses a large menu of climates, real-estate markets, and amenities from which to choose. It also forces elected officials to employ a variety of tactics such as cash incentives, infrastructure investments, and tax breaks to win over prospective transplants and fortify their economies.
Whether it's Los Angeles scoring the 2028 Olympics, or Austin persuading Tesla to move its headquarters to the city, splashy announcements generate buzz about the winning cities and allow them to sell people on the upside of moving to the area. On the flip side, cities that lose people and jobs are at risk of entering the "urban doom loop" — a downward spiral of declining economic vitality, falling tax revenue, and a drop in local public services.
Over the past 50 years, the winners of this intercity battle have been the booming metros in the Sun Belt. Millions of people have migrated to the US South and West seeking out the sun and cheaper homes. Business has followed: The headquarters of Fortune 500 companies have rapidly shifted away from industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast toward cities like Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta. However, in recent years these onetime winners have started to grapple with a new set of challenges caused by the changing climate: 120-degree days in the summer, encroaching flood waters, and the ever present threat of wildfires. The idyllic destinations for Americans seeking a better life are starting to look like precarious long-term bets.
While Sun Belt cities are working to mitigate these challenges, the increased risks also create an opportunity for once forgotten cities. Places that previously were in decline such as Buffalo, New York, and Detroit are rolling out a new type of marketing campaign to make the case that they can offer a desirable mix of stable weather, cheap housing, and robust public investment. These "climate oases" and "climate havens" have been trying to attract newly footloose Americans, freed from the office by the rise of working from home, and lure risk-averse people who are deeply concerned about rising climate risk.
Hell or high water?
While many Americans are still moving into areas facing a rising tide of disasters, the country's increasing climate risks have sparked a countermovement of people looking for a safe haven from storms and droughts.
A report from the real-estate-data provider CoreLogic found that 14.5 million homes in the US were affected by natural disasters in 2021, and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the number of disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage has been increasing over the past 10 years. The frequency of these costly catastrophes is making many Americans rethink their living arrangements: 23% of people surveyed in a recent USA Today poll said they thought they would eventually be forced to move because of the climate crisis. For Americans living in areas more prone to disasters, the numbers were even higher — 30% of people in the West said they anticipated needing to move eventually.
Most of the current climate migration is happening in outlying areas faced with recurring natural disasters. Longtime residents of the Florida Keys, which have been battered by fierce hurricanes and rising sea levels, are starting to leave their homes. And many residents of rural California are finding it increasingly difficult to purchase home insurance in fire-prone areas, prompting some to move. But as weather extremes become more pronounced, major metro areas could start to feel some strain. A 2016 study published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, found that "Americans favor a daily average temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit" and would generally pay more to avoid excessive heat rather than cold. So as average temperatures start to drift higher around the country, some of the more populated areas in the South and West could begin to lose out as people seek relief from the heat. This opens the door for once beleaguered locales in the Midwest and industrial Northeast to reenter the ring.
For decades, cities such as Detroit, Baltimore, and Cincinnati have been on a downward spiral as they lose people and businesses to the sunnier parts of the country. But now the tides are starting to turn in their favor: These cities generally have easy access to plenty of clean water, cooler climates, and less exposure to the coastal hurricanes, forest fires, and flooding that are more frequent in the Sun Belt. Add in relatively cheap homes and a willingness to invest in the types of infrastructure necessary to adapt to our changing planet, and the formerly forgotten parts of the country are starting to look attractive.
Take Buffalo. The city's population has since 1970 been on a long, steady decline as its thriving industrial sector was hollowed out. Now, the city's leaders have sensed an opportunity to revitalize the region. Buffalo's natural characteristics provide a good starting point — its high temperature in July of 79 degrees is much cooler than in Phoenix, for instance. And according to data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city has been hit by only 27 federally declared disasters since 1953. Compare that with the 80 disasters that have hit Los Angeles County and the 41 disasters in Miami-Dade County. Then there's its abundant freshwater from Lake Erie, relatively cheap housing market — Zillow shows that the median home price in the city was $215,000 as of October — and robust infrastructure from the city's previous life as a manufacturing center. With all that in mind, Buffalo has a chance to stage a serious comeback.
Buffalo's leaders have decided to capitalize on these advantages by explicitly painting the city as a safe spot to ride out the county's coming climate upheaval. In a 2019 speech, Mayor Byron Brown said the city would be a "climate refuge" for Americans seeking a more stable place to lay down roots and promised to make investments in the city's resiliency. The declaration has been followed up with investments in key areas — climate resilience was one of the four pillars that made up the city's four-year strategic plan released at the start of 2023. As part of the plan, Buffalo's government said it planned to invest in a more resilient local electricity grid, convert city vehicles and buildings to renewable energy, and invest in emissions-reducing infrastructure such as electric-vehicle charging stations and improved bike lanes. Beyond direct investment, the city also committed to working with private businesses to reduce their climate impact, including financing that allows companies to make energy-efficient upgrades to their facilities on the cheap.
While there are many questions about the rollout of the plans, the vocal commitment of Buffalo to make the changes needed to make the city more climate-resilient will likely act as a clarion call for many Americans. Each year, roughly 8 million Americans move to a different state. If 1% of these movers chose Buffalo, this would be an inflow of 80,000 people to a city home to 275,000 people — a massive increase. And Buffalo isn't the only city in the country's industrial belt trying to win over new residents with this sales pitch: Places including Duluth, Minnesota; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and even Chicago are also making a bid for free-moving and climate-concerned workers.
Proving they're the places to be
Climate competition is still just one aspect of the battle between cities. Other factors, such as schools, crime, and job availability, are also crucial to developing the image as an up-and-coming place to move. Many of the cities that are trying to offer themselves to "climate refugees" have struggled with one or more of these elements in the recent past — but there is hope here.
Households and individuals are able to make an informed decision about where to live based on a wealth of data, on things including home prices, graduation rates for public schools, and job openings. For concerns such as crime, the FBI has a tool on its website to allow people to compare data for different cities and states across the country. As we start to learn more about the emerging climate risks to various parts of the country, the US government can play a similar role in providing city-level data including recent temperature by month, air pollution, natural-disaster damage, and rainfall.
The real-estate firm Redfin has partnered with the nonprofit First Street Foundation to provide property-level report cards on fire, flood, and heat risk to people searching for housing. My ongoing research highlights that homebuyers in both red states and blue states have begun to make decisions based on this information, weighing it as a factor in where they choose to move. As extreme weather events occur, people looking for a new home will be able to evaluate how many people died or lost their homes in any given city because of the climate crisis. The most climate-resilient cities will become the clear winners.
And if cities such as Buffalo and Detroit invested in infrastructure — from new roads and renewable-power plants to entertainment districts and improved schools — to support movers, this would act as a self-reinforcing economic cycle that could enhance their natural weather advantages. As the population grows, new restaurants and cultural opportunities will pop up. Home prices will grow, creating local wealth and economic development. And the spending on activities and housing will boost local tax revenues and provide cities a chance to reinvest in core services — the opposite of the "doom loop." But public-sector investment alone won't go very far without the innovation of the private sector.
Northern and Midwestern states will need a strong private-sector presence to meet the ever evolving demands that the climate crisis and a wave of new residents will bring. Here, too, there are hopeful examples. In the recent past, the city of Pittsburgh suffered a sharp decline when its "golden goose" of steel production declined. In recent decades, the city has made a dramatic comeback as a "brains economy" featuring robotics firms working with researchers at nearby universities and the rise of the health-innovation economy. After decades of decline, census estimates show that the Pittsburgh area's population finally leveled off from 2010 to 2022 and suggest that the number of people living in the city could bounce back in the coming years. Pittsburgh's rebound offers an optimistic case study for other Rust Belt cities.
The climate 'Super Bowl'
The shifting climate does not mean that there will be a sudden migration of Americans to the middle of the country. Many people still stick close to home: A 2015 report from The New York Times found that the average American lived only 18 miles from their mother. And the cities that could become climate havens have their weather downsides — Buffalo will still have some harsh winters, too.
But even in small numbers, regional migration will have serious downstream effects on America's cities. If Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other cities succeed in their climate-resilience agendas, they will grow, attracting residents from more at-risk areas of the country. That, in turn, will force at-risk cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, and Phoenix to invest more to offset their heat and flood risk. Even on a city level, competition fosters innovation — and the great "Super Bowl" of climate competition will spur our collective adaptation.
Matthew E. Kahn is the Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of the 2010 book "Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future" and the 2021 book "Adapting to Climate Change."