This has to be one of the sillier things I've ever seen. Highlighted in the article is Phoenix arizona in Maricopa County which is one of the most responsibly managed metropolitan areas in the country if not the world.<p>More than 50% of the power derived from nuclear at Palos Verdes just 45 miles from the city which evaporates wastewater to drive turbines and provide cooling. Another 14% from solar. Plumbed grey water throughout 80% of the metropolitan area. Per-capita water used declined by 20% over the past 40 years. Net groundwater contributor with 100 year plan for water usage anticipating drought conditions. This is actually the picture of a sustainable metropolitan area with low taxes and high quality of life.<p>Meanwhile the author lives in a city (somerville, ma) which routinely dumps its sewage and into the nearest rivers, in a part of the country that burns diesel to stay warm for months out of the year and where without a precision engineered weather suit between dec and may you will die from just being outside.<p>I'm not saying 118 is for everyone but if you have shade you won't die. Just comically out of touch.
> How did we become so divorced from reality?<p>Before criticizing those seeking a better life in questionable directions first ask why are they motivated to do so in the first place? This pattern predates COVID, what is the problem in the North East that is causing people to move south west? Answer that and you might have a clue as to why the migration is happening and what to do about it.
A lot of hot air:<p>People move to these cities because of PR and marketing? It seems like it is the author who is divorced from reality. Is there study on marketing dollar to population growth? Do mega cluster exists because of superior marketing?<p>A more convincing argument would be that policy attracts talent and business, and locations with bad weather is more likely to have better policy.<p>That and serendipity - Michael Dell and William Shockley come to mind
You can move west without moving to a desert. I’m in San Diego for a bit. It’s been in the low 70’s and climate control consists of opening or closing the windows.<p>Meanwhile back home in the midwest I’m trying to coordinate someone to be at my house while the HVAC folks replace the compressor in my heat pump. I was going to wait until we got back but the temps are getting so high we’re concerned our fish are going to die.
> For the climate-friendly but less glamorous northern cities like Albany, Worcester, and Pittsburg, a successful marketing campaign could make them the climate-proof cities of the future.<p>Putting aside any of the climate change arguments, suggesting that successful marketing could make Albany a “city of the future” is absurd. I don’t know what you would have to pay me to be willing to live in Albany, ever, let alone during the winter — but it would be a lot. Like, at least $1.5m a year. And even then, I’m going to be taking many bad for the environment flights to NYC or a more desirable western city as often as possible. I abhor the Midwest (although Chicago, Boulder, and Denver are some exceptions), but if I’m going to have to live in a shithole, I’d rather be in Michigan or Minnesota or even Indiana before I would live in Albany.<p>The article also seems to ignore non-coastal western and southern cities that aren’t as deeply impacted by climate change. Yeah, Phoenix and Las Vegas might be fucked, but Denver? Salt Lake City?<p>It says “don’t move west,” but also mentions Seattle, NYC, and Boston and places that need to still concentrate on affordable housing to be attractive — which as a person who has lived in NYC and Seattle, I can tell you housing/rent hasn’t been affordable in NYC compared to the rest of the world in decades and Seattle is getting less and less affordable (I pay more in rent than all but one of my NYC friends and her mortgage is a monthly figure that would make even most New Yorkers choke), housing isn’t affordable because it doesn’t have to be.
The author talks about climate change, but it seems he doesn't know that cold-weather cities use more energy in heating than hot-weather cities use in cooling. Also the energy sources used in heating (oil, propane and natural gas) contribute more to global warming than the electricity energy mix used for cooling.<p>The north-east is going to have an expensive reckoning as they build billions of dollars of off-shore windfarms to start catching up to the renewable energy production that is already in the Southern US, and also the tens of millions of households that will need to replace their furnaces and boilers with heat pumps to stop burning fossil fuels to heat their homes.
This is a fascinating article because at the surface level it <i>appears</i> to be high quality information. It looks nice. It's well written. It speaks in the kind of sweeping generalities and economic lingo that give it an air of authority.<p>But by the time I got about 3/4 of the way through, I realized that this was basically just some random blogger's opinion piece with little to no research or data to back it up. It falls apart if you squint at it.<p>First of all, the title implies that some general directional trend is at play, but then cherrypicks just a couple of cities. I'm not sure how <i>Miami</i> of all places is a good example of people moving <i>west.</i><p>Also, attributing the success of the handful of cherrypicked cities to "marketing" is... bizarre. These are actual places with actual history that people can form real opinions of based on what the place is actually like to live in. People don't live in Austin because someone told them to live in Austin. They live there because they love it, a property they are able to accurately perceive for themselves independent of marketing telling them what to think.<p>I don't like to be negative online but this article is just not very good.
She doesn't actually make any logical arguments for her conclusions except contradicting herself. Triple the risk of drought in a place that's already a desert? Obviously drought isn't a can't-live-there problem. Even Miami is getting a sea wall to protect it. Increased this and more of that? How much more? Enough that people won't live there or not enough to matter or enough to be worth the lower real estate prices?<p>Also people move to places to live there today, not suffer a bad life just so their house will be worth more in 50 years.
<i>Americans Have Options. So Why Do They Go West and South?</i><p>I spent about seventeen years in the north. I came pretty close to offing myself due to seasonal depression. There's a not-insignificant chance that New Orleans will end up drowning before the end of my expected GenX lifetime but I'm still gonna enjoy the rest of life several orders of magnitude than if I'd stayed in Boston or Seattle. Even if it ends in that flood.
This is why some of the rustbelt cities like the one I grew up in (Buffalo, NY) will have a resurgence at some point. They have affordable housing, good infrastructure bones (including green hydro power from Niagara Falls), are on one of the world's largest sources of fresh water in the Great Lakes and have direct flights to most cities you'd need to get to for work when required. While the few months of winter rather suck, it is easier to deal with a few months of winter than these 115 degree summer days the article talks about (heating, an extra layer or two of clothing, etc.). Buffalo also has being on the Canadian border and being an hour and a half from Toronto going for it. I moved to Sydney, Australia to be with my Aussie wife (who wants to stay here) but I see several of my friends who had moved away moving back to Buffalo to be around family and buying a house for cash under these remote work conditions - and if I was States-side I'd be considering it too...
> Though real estate investment groups are often blamed for the lack of affordable housing, the real problem is restrictive building laws — especially in desirable, liberal, and highly regulated cities.<p>> The above-listed places are cheap because they have lots of land and few regulations...<p>Being clear here there's a difference between what "building more housing" means in SF, Seattle etc, that is, densifying existing detached homes and creating a compact city, and what is means in Vegas, Phoenix and other places, which is unsustainable, endless, automobile dependent sprawl. The former a much more politically challenging thing as it means pushing back against the "American Dream" of a detached home and white picket fence. Adding yet another house on the edge is of course quite easy.<p>This sprawl is part of what is driving the doom of cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix. Woefully inefficient sprawl, absurdly large highways and countless CO2 emitting cars.<p>I'm sure electric cars will help, but it's gonna be a tough transition to there and the energy needs will be incredible. What really needs to happen is to stop sprawling and rebuild these cities, but who knows if the genie can be put back into the bottle there.
I love how this “article” completely glosses over the fact that the northeast/Midwest gets devastating snowstorms that cripple entire states for days at a time. These “polar vortexes” are clearly becoming more severe and more common as the earth’s weather continues to spiral out of control.<p>So the options are move somewhere where it’s hell on earth for a portion of the year, move somewhere where it’s a frozen wasteland for a portion of the year, or move somewhere temperate along the coast which is also going to be impacted by climate change.<p>Author should get off their high horse.