Presentation short abstract

Extreme heat and adaptation reshape cities but mirror inequalities, sometimes driving displacement. This study maps climate gentrification in metropolitan Barcelona, revealing unequal vulnerability and urging justice-centered, community-informed adaptation.

Presentation long abstract

Extreme heat and climate adaptation are reshaping cities, but these shifts follow entrenched inequalities that determine who remains vulnerable and whose needs are overlooked. Adaptation efforts like heat mitigation and green infrastructure, can unintentionally heighten displacement pressures by increasing neighborhood desirability without securing affordable housing, pushing out low income and minority residents. These dynamics expose a housing–climate paradox in which expanding adaptation measures can deepen exclusion through rising costs, shifting risk geographies, and speculative investment in climate resilient areas.

This paper examines how climate adaptation strategies in the Barcelona metropolitan area intersect with housing precarity, climate adaptation, and emergent forms of climate gentrification. Using a participatory mixed methods design that combines spatial indicators, correlation based statistical analysis, and qualitative work with municipal actors and grassroots organizations, the study develops a metropolitan vulnerability index grounded in the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity framework.

Results reveal a geography of unequal climate vulnerability where peripheral municipalities of the metropolitan area concentrate high exposure, intensified social sensitivity, and limited adaptive capacity. Expanded qualitative data further illuminate how community-based organizations negotiate heat through embodied, domestic, and collective practices that coexist with and often contradict institutional adaptation strategies. By foregrounding the entanglements between everyday climate practices, housing inequalities, and the political economies driving metropolitan adaptation, this research offers tools for anticipating climate related displacement. It argues for justice centered adaptation strategies that attend to structural drivers of vulnerability and recognizes community knowledge as essential to building more equitable urban futures.