Extreme weather events due to climate change are exacerbating housing and infrastructure precarity in many parts of the world. In turn, these forms of precarity also increase vulnerability to climate impacts. During the 2021 British Columbia heat dome – the deadliest weather event in Canadian history – almost all of the 619 deaths occurred at home or in a hotel, with the elderly, disabled, and poor disproportionately impacted. Wildfire, flooding, and rising sea levels are already pushing existing infrastructure to the breaking point. The immense social investment required to reinvent our built environment to survive, thrive, and mitigate climate change constitutes an ambitious and wide-ranging opportunity to transform our societies. This stream of work involves co-developed research and policy approaches for transforming our built environment and critical infrastructures, while redressing intersecting inequities.
We ask: how do we ensure that our efforts do not reproduce the colonial and capitalist infrastructures while creating life-supporting infrastructure? How do we ensure that climate ‘solutions’ focused on decarbonizing and increasing the resilience of built environments and infrastructure do not deepen existing inequities?
Topics in this research stream:
- Housing precarity, tenancy, and housing justice
- Extreme weather events
- Energy and industrial transitions
- Climate change mitigation
- Mobility justice