Disorderly urban adaptation to climate change: qualitative modeling of finance, land use, and the built environment

Abstract This article develops the concept of “disorderly” urban adaptation to describe processes of change that unfold through exogenous shocks, abrupt policy shifts, and sharp adjustments in asset valuations and risk ratings. We present an approach to studying disorderly urban adaptation through qualitative modeling of interactions among three sub-systems: the built environment, land use, and finance. This approach sheds light on key features of disorderly adaptation, such as temporal and spatial mismatches, balancing and reinforcing feedbacks, and lags that “desynchronize” processes of sub-system change. We illustrate this approach through a discussion of research on the interaction between fire risk, insurance, land use, and the built environment in California, where mega-fires in 2017–2020 triggered a process of disorderly adaptive change. We suggest that this approach can aid in understanding and planning for emerging trajectories of urban change in many contexts and in relation to various hazards.