By Thor Benson | The Daily Beast
The debate over gentrification is constantly raging in Los Angeles—home to the most gentrified neighborhood in America.
That’s about to get significantly worse. Welcome to the age of “climate gentrification,” when the effects of climate change cause residents in one area to relocate to another area that is not experiencing those problems, which drives up property prices.
“In the past few years, it’s become clear to me that forest fires have an equal weight and influence,” Jesse Keenan, a faculty member of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and the inventor of the term “climate gentrification,” said of wildfires in the southern California area.
“It makes perfect sense to me that at some point in time in Southern California people will want to move to areas that are proximate to their communities, and that may mean moving to areas that are lower risk but have… a different set of cultures and socio-economic characteristics.”
