Rochester, NY – In 2020, after ferocious forest fires across southern California, Jasmine Singer and his wife, Moore Rhys, decided that they had enough Los Angeles. They packed their bags and moved to New York.
They debated between Ithaca and Geneva before finally choosing Rochester. Also known as Flower City, Rochester has won partly due to a more stable climate and progressive policies aimed at fighting climate change, caused by fuel combustion such as petrol and coal.
“We were all kinds of walnuts on the climate,” said Singer about the selection of Rochester.
One of the first American cities and an old manufacturing hub, Rochester has captured the eye of certain people who seek to escape extreme weather events. Other industrial urban centers in the middle of the century, such as Buffalo and Duluth, Minnesota, have drawn attention in recent years to be known as Climate Havens. Indeed, they are less likely to experience events supplied and exacerbated by climate change, such as droughts, hurricanes and forest fires.
Far from the coasts, cities like Rochester, Buffalo and Duluth do not face hurricanes or storm overvoltages. At the same time, they are linked to large lakes, which gives them a sufficient water supply and helping to isolate the impacts of drought.
However, while anecdotes abound from people who move to such cities for climatic reasons, there is no evidence of significant demographic change yet.
“There was no clear signal that people start from climatic (friendly) or regions with abundant water resources,” said Alex de Sherbinin, director and principal researcher at the Center for Integrated Earth System Information at Columbia University.
This should change in the decades to come, because the climate will be more and more a motivation factor for migration. It is already in many places in the world, especially developing countries that do not have infrastructure and resources to resist climatic shocks. Each year, natural disasters oblige more than 21 million people from their home, according to the High Commissioner of the United Nations refugees.
Rochester has many prints
Originally from New Jersey, Singer said that Rochester had also seduced it for several reasons, even if it had never visited the city before the move – affordable housing, its evolution towards the increase in renewable energy consumption and the proximity of the coastal cities of the East, among them.
It was also important to be in a culturally diverse and friendly place towards LGBTQ people, said Singer.
For Jon Randall, forest fires that hit the Bay Area in 2022 pushed him to leave California.
“For six weeks, you could not go out,” said Randall about fires, adding that he and his wife have sought potential places to live and retire online. They chose Rochester, in part, to get closer to his family in Long Island, where he is from.
Associated Press
The average annual temperature in Rochester, which has 200,000 residents, hovers about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than that of summer and colder in winter. The city is home to the University of Rochester, a private research institution, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, which is in the southwest suburbs. Rochester is also known for its “garbage plates” – homemade fries and a macaroni salad garnished with hamburger pancakes and covered with meat sauce, a favorite local dish.
The City has adopted several progressive climate plans in recent years, including an initiative to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. It is part of a thrust on the scale of the State to build a cleaner infrastructure, such as the improvement of its electrical vehicle load network. In 2019, the city launched an initiative which gives up to $ 9,000 to new buyers of resident houses.
Climate is often one of the many factors in the decision to move
Studies have shown that people rarely choose where they are alone on the basis of the climate. They also weigh other factors such as affordability, family ties and job opportunities.
People move where they think they can maintain a certain quality of life, and Rochester – with its freshwater resources – can make a more attractive destination compared to other cities, said Sherbinin.
Duluth acquired a reputation that respects the climate after having commanded an economic development set to attract new arrivals in 2019. That same year, the mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, described the city as “climate refuge” in a speech.
No proclamations of this type were recently made by local officials, especially in Rochester. The office of the mayor Malik Evans did not respond to telephone calls and emails requesting comments for this story.
Rochester has a large Latin population
Rochester has praised a constant increase in Latinos in recent years. Today, 61,000 inhabitants of the county of Monroe, the most important in the Rochester region, identify as Latino or Hispanic, with 70% Porto Rican, according to a 2019 report by the Center for Governmental Research, a consulting company based in Rochester.
Arelis Gomez moved to Rochester in 2016 from Puerto Rico in search of work possibilities and better education for his children, according to his brother, who had moved to New York a few years ago.
Arelis Ayala, his mother, followed his daughter in 2019, finally took the plunge after wanting to leave since Hurricane Jorge in 1998, which hammered many parts of the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico.
“It was a really difficult decision,” said Ayala about his move to get closer to his daughter. Ayala and her daughter hope to bring the rest of the family to Rochester.
Jonathan Gonzalez and his then pregnant wife moved to Rochester after another major storm, Hurricane Maria, beat Puerto Rico in 2017.
“It was quite difficult to live in Puerto Rico at the time,” said Gonzalez, adding that everything, including hospitals, was closed because of electricity.
His mother already had a house in Rochester, which made it a natural place. The arrival was difficult, although Gonzalez feels at home now.
“I love Rochester,” he said.
Publisher’s note: This story is a collaboration between the Associated Press and the Rochester Institute of Technology.
