Linda Shi

I’m an Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning. I study barriers to coastal climate adaptation, how cities are adapting, and the impacts of their adaptation efforts on social and spatial inequality across the Global North and South.

Climate change is restructuring social and spatial development, and societal responses to “realign” cities are resulting in new geographies of ecological enclaves, climate slums, and sites of displacement. Many institutions shaping urban land governance – such as land use regulations, fiscal and financial policies, and property rights regimes – have contributed to and continue to propel unequal and unsustainable development. Changing inequities in the built environment therefore requires changing fundamental approaches to land ownership, land commodification, and regional governance.

My research aims to reveal how current institutions contribute to unjust and unsustainable adaptation in order to enable policy reforms that redress underlying causes of societal vulnerability to climate change.