Escaping the Climate Crisis: Speculative Wealth and the Selling of a Smart City
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v14i2.7544Abstract
As climate change threatens cities worldwide, how does the act of escaping environmental disaster become entangled with opportunities to generate wealth? Recent projections indicate that Manila, the capital of the Philippines, will become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. In response, the government has begun constructing New Clark City, a smart city promoted as a backup capital where government functions can escape to if climate disasters render Manila inoperable. However, New Clark City has sparked intense speculation and is marketed not only as a safe haven, but also as a lucrative investment. This article introduces the concept of speculative escape to explore the complex fusion of fleeing climate catastrophe and capitalizing on climate infrastructure. It argues that speculative escape depends on deliberate spatial and social isolation, shielding privileged groups from ecological and infrastructural breakdown. Corporate actors reinforce this narrative by promoting New Clark City as both a secure financial asset and a space of sustainability, linking survival to capital accumulation in a climate-threatened future. Through this case, the article shows how climate change is transformed into a managed and marketable vision of elite survival, revealing how climate escape is shaped by exclusionary practices and uneven politics of adaptation.
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