Research Findings

In a forthcoming paper (Ogden et al. - see publications), project collaborators report that hurricane response work indicates that hurricane Andrew magnified spatial differentiation of neighborhoods and accelerated ongoing processes of demographic change in the hardest-hit areas of South Florida.

Dr. Hugh Gladwin and collaborators have focused on land use decision-making processes and report that much past urban expansion has been into low-elevation areas out of the original higher elevation urban core on the coastal ridge. This expansion, still ongoing, is primarily into former Everglades land and follows a typical urban sprawl pattern.  Planners have called for a reversal of this trend and movement back to the higher elevation urban core areas with more effective transportation in those areas, but these have been largely ignored. We hypothesize that: 1) pressures to expand development into higher elevation areas outside the urban development boundary will intensify, and 2) government planning for adaptation to sea level rise threats to lower elevation areas may involve moving residents to higher elevations urban core areas. This gives planners another reason to reverse urban expansion, but at the same time introduces workforce and social justice issues, since most residents of urban core areas are lower income African-Americans, as this was the location of much of the county’s affordable housing.

Marcos Feldman, a graduate student affiliated with FIU’s Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy (RISEP), has completed analyses exploring the relationship between past patterns of urban development and contemporary displacement vulnerability to SLR. A paper in preparation (Feldman et al) documents: a) the forces driving the persistent inflation of land and housing values, and b) how these forces, some more than others, shape unequal access to land in the urban core, particularly making low-income residents on inner city high ground increasingly vulnerable to displacement as well as generally limiting low-income residents access to inner city high ground. Findings include:

  • US Census data between 1990 and 2000 illustrate the replacement of lower-income residents by higher-income residents (gentrification) in specific urban core neighborhoods (South Beach, West Coconut Grove, Design District).
  • Property sales data from 2000-2005 (during the recent housing boom) illustrate the more recent gentrification of these neighborhoods (corroborated by newspaper and other secondary source accounts), with the most dramatic (relative to countywide trends) home price appreciation found in Wynwood/Midtown, West Coconut Grove, East Little Havana, Little Haiti adjacent to the Design District and the "Upper East Side" (also in "newly" developing areas near Homestead and along South Dixie Hwy).
  • City of Miami data from 2002-2007 American Community Survey similarly illustrate the rapid replacement of lower-income by higher-income residents and the relatively faster appreciation of housing costs among the most affordable rentals (or for the lowest-income renters), suggesting the rapid net decline of affordability among the cheapest segments of the urban core's rental market.
  • This data reveal that access to the urban core has become increasingly unequal. Further collaboration with FIU’s RISEP will include interviews with leaders of community organizations to open dialogue among researchers and communities vulnerable to the double exposure of climate change and economic globalization.

One standard and essential viewpoint from which to summarize community vulnerability to SLR is through analysis of the property values at risk. Keqi Zhang recently completed such an analysis for the three mainland counties of south Florida, using LiDAR data in combination with property rolls. Zhang constructed hypsometric curves that showed that the counties differed greatly in the shape of their property loss curves. Miami-Dade has already passed the “tipping point” where SLR effects begin to rise steeply, while the two northern counties will both reach this stage within the next few decades. Tipping points such as those anticipated by Zhang are difficult for the public to accept and act on, as they do not see the evidence before the event is upon them. Zhang’s analysis demonstrates the sensitivity of the process to the rate of SLR, not just the ultimate amount of rise. The manuscript is now in press with the journal Climatic Change.