The hot real estate plays of the next decade will be in the rust belt along the Great Lakes.

Writing in Citylab, Jeremy Deaton asks Will Buffalo become a climate change haven? This is something we have been talking about on TreeHugger for a decade; it already is. Buffalo has just about everything going for it including water, electricity, rail, even canals. It has great architecture and cheap real estate. It has been going through a remarkable revitalization. Years ago, Ed Glaeser wrote about the things that hurt Buffalo over the years:

Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

© Kayla Jonas

Those “lake effect” blizzards off Lake Erie could bury the city, while Toronto, less than fifty miles away, would miss it all. But Deaton in Citylab says the weather is changing, and isn’t so dismal. The average temperature has warmed 2 degrees since 1965, but Buffalo climate scientist Stephen Vermette found few other effects:

Barbara Campana/via

Ancient landmarks in Buffalo/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

Or, as he summarized:

It’s fettered by fortresses now/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

I suspect he’s right, and that just as Canadians hug the southern border because it is warmer, Americans are going to be returning to the rust belt because it is cooler. And unless they drill a big pipe from the Great Lakes to California (not beyond the realm of possibility), the rust belt is going to have all the good water.

Yamasaki in Buffalo/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

Deaton worries that there will be massive gentrification, and quotes Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

Lloyd Alter/ Empty lot near Larkin Square, Buffalo/CC BY 2.0

I suspect that this is already happening. Property values are rising; Toronto real estate developers are looking south for the next boom. Factories and office buildings that have been vacant for years, even decades, are turning into condos. Fortunately, there is enough supply and vacant land that it won’t happen overnight. But a decade ago I concluded my article with this sentence that is still true today:

Electric tower/Lloyd Alter/CC BY 1.0