Great article on the disconnectedness and short-term-ism: > She said the main thing is just that Miami was being very forward thinking. She mentioned Amsterdam, and how they were making it work, and how the Dutch were just the poster child for how this worked, and that they were sorting out a way to make this work. “I think the takeaway is just that Miami is doing something about it.” Guess this will take a few flood…
In California both the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles have a significant amount of near term risk in terms of water and seismic risk. The absolute worst case scenarios probably make Miami in 2069 look mild.
During the cold war, the assumption was that any major US or European city could become un-inhabitable in moments and most of the humans would be dead. That provided a pretty strong incentive not to build in a dense urban areas, but it was balanced out with the sense of total annihilation for everyone. Some still chose to put their money in to fallout shelters than "prime" Manhattan real estate.
I don't know much about cities and populations outside of the US. I suspect a lot of them are at risk. In Iraq, if the Mosul dam failed, most of the major cities would be wiped out. This is probably true in many other places with questionable hydrology infrastructure.
It would be interesting to build risk models of geographical areas that are at risk of instant destruction (dam failure, earthquakes, nuclear power plant failures, nuclear weapons) and longer term risks. What parts of the world will humans live in 500 years?
Also I'd like to hear from people who are living in the Millennium Tower in San Francisco.