In low-elevation coastal zones, some locations are less exposed to flooding than others, and some are more easily protected with barriers or other flood prevention measures. Even within a coastal urban centre, it is possible to concentrate urban populations and vulnerable assets in less exposed areas. Alternatively, assuming protection costs are proportional to the area protected, it is more economical to protect people when they are concentrated in small areas. There is a danger that measures to protect flood-prone locations will attract population and assets away from inherently safer locations, and, indeed, this is often an integral part of the means through which such measures are funded—as when private funding for flood protection is secured in return for planning permission to allow dense residential and commercial construction in the protected area. Generally, while urbanization can help reduce the burden of coastal risks, this is not an automatic outcome of urbanization and requires that the risks be addressed explicitly. More generally, successful climate regimes in and for coastal cities could, in principle, create compact settlements both low in carbon emissions and better protected against climate-related hazards. Land values are likely to be high in these settlements with high residential and commercial densities and open land managed to provide ecosystem services. As with highly designed ecological cities, this raises questions about the urban dwellers who now live in informal settlements, with limited rights to the city.
Density, informal settlement and accommodating rapid urban population growth in a changing climate Yet again, the foregoing section places land issues, already central to the challenge of contemporary urban population growth, at the centre of urban climate challenges. Particularly in rapidly urbanizing Africa and Asia, there is a distinct danger that a combination of climate change, climate change policies and reactions to inadequately accommodated urban population growth will reinforce exclusive forms of urban development, leaving the groups that now live in informal settlements exposed to climate-related hazards, compounding the many risks that they already face. Nevertheless, there have been positive experiences, some in relation to accommodating rapid urban population growth and some in relation to upgrading or relocating informal settlements. China, for example, has in recent decades been very positive and pro-active about urbanization and expanding urban construction, which compensates to at least some degree for its authoritarian attitude to informal settlements and evictions. In Thailand the Government’s Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) has supported hundreds of community-driven upgrading schemes. In many nations, federations of slum dwellers now work with city governments to map and plan needed improvements (Boonyabancha, 2009). For the most part, however, these positive experiences remain the exception, and in most growing cities a disproportionate share of the growth is in poorly served and badly located informal settlements. Moreover, well-located informal settlements are often in need of upgrading, and inhabitants are under growing pressure to move. This is particularly evident in Asia (see the International Institute for Environment and Development Fai r A n d E ffe ct i ve R e s po n s e s to U rban i zat i o n A n d C li m at e Ch a nge : Tap pi ng Sy n e rgi e s an d Avo i d i ng E xc lus i o nary P o li c i e s
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