Abundant water. Relatively stable climate. Room to grow. Those are all attributes local leaders say make Cincinnati a potential haven for people leaving places prone to the worst effects of climate change.
Those traits position the city for growth, and potentially, prosperity, city leaders say. But any influx of new residents could come with challenges as well — competition for resources; increasing costs for housing and other necessities; strained infrastructure.
The city of Cincinnati's Office of Environment and Sustainability released its Climate Migration Readiness Plan May 13 to weigh all those factors.
The plan considers how climate migration could shape the city by the year 2050, what other cities are doing to prepare for potential influxes of new residents and what Cincinnati can do now to get ready.
OES Director Ollie Kroner says it's an issue a lot of cities are talking about, and one where Cincinnati has some inherent strengths.
Kroner points out strategic steps the city already is taking that will help its readiness for any climate migration. Those include some funding for affordable housing and initiatives like a new solar array in Winton Hills.
"You see the investments in public transportation, you see the moves the city is making to enhance and up-zone along transportation corridors," he says. "We already have state-of-the-science water treatment. But we have some work to do on stormwater management, both our pipes and our green infrastructure."
Mayor Aftab Pureval says the plan highlights a long list of priorities.
"Continuing to build housing, continuing to invest in our built infrastructure — our roads and bridges and rec centers — continuing to really have the workforce and the job opportunities," he says. "Having a strong social safety net as well is critically important as we work to balance the equities — particularly the racial equities — in our community."
SUBHEAD
It isn't clear how many people have moved to Cincinnati for climate reasons, though Census data suggests it's a relatively small number so far.
WVXU has spoken to people who moved to Greater Cincinnati from California, Arizona, Louisiana, Florida and other states at least in part due to climate change for previous stories.
George Williams is one of those residents. He moved from his native New Orleans to Cincinnati five years ago.
“What brought me up here, when you get down to the root of the matter, is climate change,” he said last year. “I am in my late 50s and I’m an eighth-generation native of the city [of New Orleans]. I’ve spent most of my life there. During that time, firsthand — which, granted, is anecdotal evidence — I’ve watched us go from a storm of the century once every century to a storm of the century once every couple of years.”
A project called the Geography of Prosperity that measures America's metro areas on five different metrics ranked Greater Cincinnati high for climate resilience — it scored an 83, near the top of the list of metro areas. Compare that to a 46 for Williams' native New Orleans, near the bottom of the list.
Though the number of climate migrants might be small right now, officials say it's important to leverage Cincinnati's strengths and assess its weaknesses to prepare for more new residents in the future.
Pureval says mainly, climate migration presents an opportunity for Cincinnati to play to its strengths and grow. But it also underscores issues the city needs to keep working on.
"If and when mass migration trends happen, what matters most is that we are prepared to not just absorb population increase, but to capitalize on it to help our city to flourish instead of allowing growth to just happen to us, which will create a lot of capacity problems," Pureval says.
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