Climate and housing rights in a warming city

In the face of climate change, extreme heat has become more than just a seasonal spell: it’s a chronic structural injustice that puts people’s wellbeing, health and their right to the city at risk. Through voices, maps, and lived experiences, this immersive journey invites a closer look at how heat and gentrification reshape who can remain and who is made displaceable. And what collective action and policy choices toward housing and climate justice might look like.

The unequal impacts of extreme heat

Does where you live determine how well you survive the heat? When the heat hits, who does your city shelter?

For many historically marginalized communities, the solutions being put in place to combat climate change are leaving them behind and facing a quadruple climate injustice.

  • They have contributed least to climate change
  • They are most exposed to its impacts
  • They have fewer means and resources to adapt
  • They are disproportionately displaced by climate-resilient infrastructure

In the face of rising global temperatures, extreme heat has become more than just an inconvenience: It’s a seasonal but increasing reminder that puts in risk people’s wellbeing, health and their right to the city. And how we plan our city has a lot to do with it. 

Climate change more than tripled summer heat deaths in Europe in 2025. In light of this crisis, cities across the world are responding with climate adaptation strategies.

Barcelona recently launched its first Heat Plan in 2025, as part of the Climate Plan 2018-2030.

Boston released in 2016 the Climate Ready Boston report, assessing its vulnerabilities to coastal and storm flooding, and extreme heat.

Heat, Housing and Health

Urban heat does not affect all homes or bodies in the same way. The case of El Raval, a central neighbourhood in Barcelona, illustrates how housing conditions, social inequality and health vulnerabilities intersect with climate impacts to produce what can be described as heat injustice.

Listening to: Juanito Alimaña by Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón

…The street is a concrete rainforest,and full of wild beasts, of course.

“In summer it’s impossible to be at home, impossible. You’d have to put in an electric fan, but it costs a lot of money to run it, so people go out into the street whether they want to or not. If they stay home in this heat, they get anxious, they cry, because it’s unbearable.”

—Raval resident

“Men from our community who live in small flats in the Raval, many people together. In a 50 m2 flat there can be six or seven people, who cook three times a day.”

—Raval resident

Concrete jungle. Image shared during participatory workshop of Raval Resilient.
Also see the IMBRACE research project.

Gentrification through climate adaptation

The emerging manifestations of climate injustices through risks of displacement

While climate resilient infrastructure is critical and necessary, as cities invest in greener, cooler areas, or flood protection they often become more attractive to wealthier residents and real estate investors.

This leads to higher rents and property values as well as unaffordable, new construction, making it harder for racialized and working-class communities to keep renting or buy homes in upgraded neighborhoods. This cycle is what we can call heat-driven or simply heat gentrification.

Pathways of climate gentrification

Play VideoPlay Video

Virginia Vallvé, Environmental Manager of Cornellà de Llobregat

There are four pathways of climate gentrification in the context of heat management that can drive rising housing costs, loss of services, and social displacement, ultimately reinforcing heat injustice.

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Privatized resilience

Retrofitted housing

Green investments

Rural gentrification

Mapping vulnerability to climate gentrification

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Barry Keppard, Director of the Public Health Department at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), Boston

How much an area is at risk from climate gentrification pressures, such as heat exposure, residential heat stress, and access to green spaces.
The characteristics that make communities more susceptible to change, including previous gentrification and socio-economic factors.
The ability and resources to mitigate climate gentrification pressures. Those tend to include access to public or social housing, climate shelters, and community services that can reduce displacement risks.

To understand how climate risks, the built environment, and socio-demographic factors intersect with climate gentrification, researchers use tools like spatial analysis and composite indices.

These methods help predict areas most vulnerable to displacement caused by climate change-driven gentrification and can thus inform more equitable climate and housing policies.

A vulnerability index to climate gentrification can help to identify at-risk areas before displacement unfolds.

While any index inevitably simplifies reality, municipalities and civic organizations need clear, accessible tools to anticipate risks, prioritize interventions, and track progress over time.

Public administration

Public administration practitioners reflected on their institutional mandates, stressing the importance of improved infrastructure and climate shelters as tools to address climate gentrification.

Grassroots organizations

Grassroots organizations, drawing on lived and direct experiences of gentrification and urban inequalities, highlighted the importance of racial discrimination and the ways new green interventions can act as attractors for real estate investment.

Climate shelters

Best practice:

Programs like climate shelters show the value of creating heat adaptation measures.

Challenge:

Ensuring they are truly accessible to all residents.

Housing retrofits

Best practice:

Retrofitting housing in socially and heat-vulnerable neighbourhoods.

Challenge:

Administrative burden and the risk of market speculation.

Climate gentrification response

Best practice:

Coordinated responses across climate action, housing, and urban greening.

Challenge:

Persistent sectoral silos.

Targeting vulnerable areas

Best practice:

Mapping vulnerable areas and scaling adaptation resources.

Challenge:

Peripheral areas face compounded vulnerabilities due to high exposure and scarce resources.

Get involved.

Building fairer and more resilient cities requires the participation of residents, communities and local and civic organizations. You can be part of this effort!

Connect with your community

Organize or join assemblies, workshops or informal conversations. Share concerns, encourage participation, and support collective action.

Map impacts in your neighborhood

se participatory mapping tools to document where heat is most intense, where cooling resources are lacking, and where housing pressures are emerging.

Explore and document people’s stories

Bring visibility to testimonies, interviews and narratives from residents with experiences of heat, housing insecurity and rapid urban change.

Speak up about climate injustices

Whether you live in an area undergoing rapid climate investments, or very far from any green or climate shelter infrastructure, sharing your perspective helps build collective knowledge and supports advocacy for protection and accountability.

Support policies that address multiple vulnerabilities

Advocate for urban policies that integrate climate adaptation, housing justice and inclusive planning.

Acknowledgments

This platform forms part of the ClimateJusticeReady and GINA projects.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who took part in our workshops and activities, especially the activists, practitioners from the AMB and other collaborators who offered their time, insights and experience, including Sindicat de Llogateres, Resistim al Gòtic and Aliança contra la Pobresa Energètica. Their commitment to their communities and their openness in contributing to this work have been essential. This project is stronger because of them, and their engagement reminds us of the importance of collective action in advancing climate and housing justice.

Further references

For more information, please see:

Calderón-Argelich, A., Anguelovski, I., Etxeberria, E., Hannuschke, L., Breton-Carbonneau, A. C., López-Gay, A., Shokry, G., Oscilowicz, E., Lown, J., Williams, P. C., Lacort, E., & Campos, M. (2025). Co-mapping vulnerability to climate gentrification in the context of urban heat: A participatory index at the metropolitan scale. Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, 4(3), 454–499. https://utppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3138/jccpe-2025-0021

Anguelovski, I., Kotsila, P., Lees, L., Triguero-Mas, M., & Calderón-Argelich, A. (2024). From heat racism and heat gentrification to urban heat justice in the USA and Europe. Nature Cities. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00179-6

Kotsila, P., Cuenca, V. C., Franco, M., Melo, L., & Pickard, S. (2025). Embodying and resisting urban heat injustice: Migrant vulnerabilities and radical adaptations in El Raval, Barcelona. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 49(6), 1462–1484. 10.1111/1468-2427.13359

Oscilowicz, E., J JT Connolly, and I. Anguelovski. 2026. Planning in a Polycrisis: Equitable Urban Strategies for a Changing Climate. Cambridge: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/policy-focus-reports/planning-in-polycrisis/