America’s Climate Boomtowns Are Waiting

Abrahm Lustgarten's book, On the Move, was excerpted in the Atlantic.

Across the Great Lakes region, cities were in their prime six decades ago as America forged its industrial might. But places such as Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Duluth have been in a steady decline ever since. And Ypsilanti, with its nest of underutilized streets, relatively cheap housing, and sprawling industrial spaces still belying the fact that its population peaked in 1970, is little different. That means—at least in theory—these cities have, in a word favored by planning types and scientists, “capacity” for more people.

As climate change brings disasters and increasingly unlivable conditions to growing swaths of the United States, it also has the potential to remake America’s economic landscape: Extreme heat, drought, and fires in the South and West could present an opportunity for much of the North. Tens of millions of Americans may move in response to these changes, fleeing coasts and the countryside for larger cities and more temperate climates. In turn, the extent to which our planet’s crisis can present an economic opportunity, or even reimagining, will largely depend on where people wind up, and the ways in which they are welcomed or scorned.