The ClimateJusticeReady project was meant to address a growing paradox in climate adaptation: while green infrastructure is increasingly promoted to reduce climate risks such as flooding and heat, it has often unintentionally triggered gentrification and displacement, particularly of low-income and racialized residents. Cities like Barcelona and Boston—leaders in climate resilience—have seen this contradiction emerge most visibly. Despite strong commitments to environmental sustainability, municipal green projects were insufficiently coupled with social equity safeguards, leading to what the project termed “green climate gentrification.”
Building on the findings of the PI’s ERC project GreenLULUs, which revealed widespread patterns of green gentrification across North America and Europe, ClimateJusticeReady sought to move from retrospective analysis to predictive action. The project’s primary objective was to develop tools and analysis that cities and communities could use to anticipate and prevent green climate gentrification before it occurred.
The project had two main goals:
1. To co-develop a replicable prediction tool and index identifying neighborhoods at risk of green climate gentrification.
2. To co-design and pilot a policy or community-based instrument—such as climate resilience funds or minority-led green business grants—to prevent displacement and strengthen local adaptive capacity.
These goals were pursued through a participatory, multi-stakeholder approach that actively involved city planners, researchers, and civic organizations, particularly from historically marginalized communities. The methodological innovation of the project lay in combining quantitative spatial analysis (of an indexe of vulnerability to climate gentrification, measured as exposure to climate gentrification plus sensitivity to climate gentrification minus adaptative capacity to climate gentrification) with qualitative input from local communities about perceived risks, needs, and priorities.
