The connections between real estate and urban climate risk management represent a critical missing link in urban research, policy-making, and practice. Real estate-finance climate risk management practices have important consequences for the welfare and prosperity of society. Housing markets and other forms of property are central to contemporary political and economic life, and real estate-linked financial markets comprise an increasingly important part of the overall financial system. Climate risks, and their management by financial institutions, may disrupt these important political economic relationships, and could destabilize ‘risky’ urban regions. Increasing disasters and other growing climate risks, and attempts to mitigate their effects, can reshape the vulnerabilities, uses, and users of property. At the same time, government-led climate risk management practices vary greatly within and across urban regions. Historical patterns of urbanization, institutional expertise and financial capacity, patterns of real estate market development and finance, and distinct geophysical processes shape current and future urban climate risk exposures, for example. This creates a complex, uncertain, and high-stakes landscape for financial and urban policy-making and practice.
The emerging interaction of institutions, imperatives, and interests that govern real estate climate risks – both across the global real estate-finance sector and within at-risk cities – may be termed the real estate finance-urban climate risk nexus. This project advances our theoretical and practical understanding of this nexus across real estate-finance institutions (asset managers; real estate investors; re/insurers), and within three ‘risky’ coastal urban regions (South Florida; the Randstad, Netherlands; and Singapore). The aim of the project is to assess current practices associated with real estate-finance climate risk management, and to identify the general and particular challenges and opportunities across these institutional and urban landscapes.
