ClimateJusticeReady project

Cities in the Global North are adopting green infrastructure to address climate risks, but concerns are growing about the displacement of lower-income and minority residents, a phenomenon known as ‘green climate gentrification.’ Despite its being recognised as an issue, few initiatives incorporate social provisions, leaving residents vulnerable. Funded by the European Research Council, the ClimateJusticeReady project will analyse the social equity impacts of climate resilience interventions, focusing on predicting, mapping, and preventing climate gentrification. Moreover, it will support actionable policy and planning tools for greater urban climate justice. ClimateJusticeReady will be implemented in collaboration with Barcelona and Boston, supporting their efforts for just and equitable green cities.

Main objectives

Cities in the Global North are increasingly adopting nature-centered and other green infrastructure interventions to respond to climate risks and impacts and enhance their adaptation and resilience capacity. Yet, plans for such green infrastructure (GI) and other urban greening interventions tend to underestimate risks of displacement for lower-income and minority residents – what myself and others have previously called green climate gentrification. Despite increasing recognition of this process and concerns for the displaced, few municipal green interventions are coupled with social provisions (such as social housing; resident-driven economic development schemes) to protect residents from displacement. Yet, predicting and preventing green gentrification is the only way to build a green resilience agenda that upholds the stated social and environmental goals of such plans and avoid green paradoxes born out of urban renaturing projects and which municipalities have expressed commitment to avoid. In this POC, I propose to further analyze the social equity impacts of climate adaptation and green resilience efforts and build on my GreenLULUs ERC in order to (a) create a replicable, interactive community- and policy-driven predictor index, tool, and analysis for green gentrification in the context of planned green climate-centered infrastructure and (b) test the early development of an actionable, pilot municipal policy and planning instrument, such as a climate-adaptation focused community land trust, a municipal green bond program for equitable climate resilience, a community-based stewardship fund, or green minority-owned green business seed grants (among others) to prevent green climate gentrification. These tasks will be decided and built in partnership with municipal governments and community groups based on pilot cities included in my finishing ERC project – Barcelona and Boston – so that this POC can support them in their work for more just green cities.

Main results

The impact of ClimateJusticeReady was twofold. First, it helped shift urban climate adaptation planning from a technocratic model to a socially inclusive one by integrating social science methods and justice-centered perspectives. Second, it empowered communities not just to resist displacement but to co-create climate solutions aligned with their needs and knowledge. By demonstrating how tools and policies can be locally adapted and scaled, the project supported broader uptake across municipalities facing similar tensions between ecological and social goals. Ultimately, ClimateJusticeReady contributed to advancing intersectional climate justice by developing concrete pathways to protect vulnerable residents from the unintended consequences of climate adaptation, ensuring that resilience-building did not come at the cost of social equity. It also brought together urban actors working closely on addressing the compounding climate and housing crisis through an international workshop we organized in Barcelona in September/October 2025, which included participants/partners from Boston and Barcelona representing both municipal actors and nonprofit groups. Academically, the project helped to move research forward on climate gentrification studies as well as on heat justice studies (article in Nature Cities, article on the Future of Gentrification submitted to CITIES, and article on the creation of a climate vulnerability index and its results submitted to the C40 journal). Climate Justice Ready helped the write up of two new grants submitted by collaborators of the project to the SSHRC research council in Canada and to the Wellcome Trust in the UK. It also created different video materials as described above.

ClimateJusticeReady

Main objectives

Main results

Website and resources