As Ron Butler narrates Mario Alejandro Ariza's kayak tour of Miami's waters with a friend, listeners will get a sense of the crisis facing the city yet be amused at the same time. Butler lets Ariza's affection for the city come through, even as the author's anger over climate gentrification emerges. Miami's geographic high ground has long been home to many people of color. Now neighborhoods such as Little Haiti are being eyed for development as fears of rising sea levels loom. As Ariza calls for action on local and national levels, Butler's voice gradually builds in emotion, conveying urgency. With an assist from science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, Ariza wraps up his audiobook with a futurist's tour of a sunken city. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Insightful and richly detailed, Disposable City tells the story of Miami's preparedness for the sea level increase that is sure to come, giving special emphasis to its potential social and economic impact…Ariza is at his most perceptive when discussing climate gentrification and cultural preservation, neither of which receives much attention in strategies for saving the city…[Readers] will appreciate its narrative force and Ariza's adroitness in making a complicated subject accessible.

"A forceful depiction of a global crisis viewed through the lens of one of the world's most vulnerable cities."
—Kirkus

"Ariza blends recent research from scientists, conversations with residents, economic trends and history in a richly reported odyssey of one city's response to a growing crisis. Weaving in his own deeply personal narrative, Ariza shows the effects of the rising tide aren't just about environmental and infrastructural change — they also impact individual lives."—Discover Magazine

"Disposable City is a vivid and well-executed portrait of a city undergoing climate metamorphosis."—Julian Brave NoiseCat, Fellow, Type Media Center

"Few places on earth make clearer the danger we're facing as a civilization: this absorbing tour of Miami (past, present, and future) will leave you insistent on joining the fight to slow down global warming!"—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

As Ron Butler narrates Mario Alejandro Ariza's kayak tour of Miami's waters with a friend, listeners will get a sense of the crisis facing the city yet be amused at the same time. Butler lets Ariza's affection for the city come through, even as the author's anger over climate gentrification emerges. Miami's geographic high ground has long been home to many people of color. Now neighborhoods such as Little Haiti are being eyed for development as fears of rising sea levels loom. As Ariza calls for action on local and national levels, Butler's voice gradually builds in emotion, conveying urgency. With an assist from science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, Ariza wraps up his audiobook with a futurist's tour of a sunken city. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

2020-03-29
How rising sea levels will test the resiliency of Florida's coastal city.

Miami-based journalist Ariza, who grew up in his native Santo Domingo and Miami, makes a compelling book debut with an urgent analysis of Miami’s vulnerability to climate change. Interviewing more than 150 sources, including city officials, geophysicists, realtors, climate scientists, and frightened residents; combing public records; and drawing on many scientific studies, Ariza argues persuasively that Miami must take “radical and swift action” to avert disaster. Although sea levels have risen 3 inches globally, in Miami, that figure is 5 inches, “influenced by the temperature of the ocean, localized atmospheric pressure, the persistent direction of the wind, and, most importantly, the relative strength of the Gulf Stream.” Because of its particular geology—the city is cut from a swamp, and its limestone soil “is ludicrously porous”—the land cannot sustain that influx of water: Roads, buildings, bridges, and septic tanks will be overwhelmed. Besides detailing Miami’s particular geography and geology, Ariza points out the economic inequality, greed, and myopic public planning that affect Miami’s future. The city, he asserts, “rests on a sodden foundation of merciless racial and environmental exploitation.” While realtors work to get the highest prices they can from properties, “the city’s already yawning gap between rich and poor” is stretched “past its breaking point.” Foreign investors, who often are absentee owners, exacerbate the problem, looking at Miami’s expensive real estate “as a good place to park capital instead of as places to live.” Ariza notes the popularity of the word “resilience” in discussions about climate change, but, he maintains, “resilience without massive carbon cuts and immediate state and federal aid is the policy equivalent of hospice care.” Miami’s problems, and the nation’s, require leaders “willing to tear down icons, bust norms, and shift debates rapidly toward recognizing the increasingly dire scientific reality.”

A forceful depiction of a global crisis viewed through the lens of one of the world’s most vulnerable cities.