Racialised uneven development and multiple exposure: sea-level rise and high-risk neighbourhoods in Stockton, CA

Abstract

Abstract This article advances a conceptual framework that illuminates how racialised uneven development inscribes overlapping and interacting risks from climate, environmental and economic riskscapes into ‘high-risk neighbourhoods’. Drawing on archival sources, geographic information systems and qualitative comparative analysis, it examines the production of high-risk neighbourhoods in Stockton, CA. With significant scholarly and practical implications, the findings reveal how different historical configurations of devalued racialised people and places, adverse housing market incorporation and displacement, and unequal flood protections are associated with elevated risk of exposure to climate-related sea-level rise in Stockton’s high-risk neighbourhoods.