Miami, with an average elevation of 6 feet above sea level, will be underwater in the next several decades. Storm surges already threaten the keys and the coastal lagoon, and this pattern is only worsening as drainage on the mainland is impacted by industry and global climate patterns cause more energetic storms, and average sea level rise.
SF, with an average of ~90ft will be much safer from this particular threat - although California will at the current rate, without serious intervention, be desert, on similar timescales.
Long term investment does not make sense when you are faced with a risk of it all ending up in the sea.
I agree that Miami will be underwater eventually. As for it being a reason for anything, I completely disagree. On your logic, nobody would be in SF because the next "big one" is coming. People generally dont give a shit.
There's a difference between earthquake risk, which is more of the "one large, recoverable, event" ilk, and the sea eating the land, which is pretty hard to come back from, particularly when you've built everything on porous limestone and sand. Dig a hole pretty much anywhere in Florida and you can watch the tide in it.
"People" generally don't, but property developers do.
It's also not "eventually", it's "imminently". You don't need the entire city to be underwater for it to be uninhabitable - you just need the sewer system to be below sea level, and you are quite literally up shit creek.
I believe you need to rethink what the word 'imminently' means. The most aggressive timescale out there from the National Climate Assessment suggests a 4 foot rise during the next one hundred years. If that started today, its less than a half inch a year. Thats hardly imminent. Thats not even in your lifetime you see the 3 foot mark.
A century is imminent as it is, unless you think only in single-life timescales, and a two foot rise will be enough to make Miami economically unviable - as above, sewerage - and fresh water - will be severely impinged by a moderate rise.
That's 50 years, even with current models. If Miami is to survive, it needs new infrastructure, now - and even that will only hold for the short term. The only long term option would be a massive caisson building effort, building a huge concrete sheet wall around the city, buried deep into the strata, down to below the porous limestone it's built atop - at least 20 feet deep in most places. Even then, you'll have issues with sinkholes due to water being removed from the strata... in short, abandonment is where Miami will end up. Nothing else makes sense.
Sea level rise is accelerating beyond our most aggressive models currently, due to ice shelf collapse - Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves are vanishing much faster than anticipated, and will likely all be gone within the decade - expect new models over the next 18 months to predict some rather radical outcomes entirely within our lifetimes.
California is running out of water and has a few years left. Thats imminent. Florida sinking in 50, 100 or 200 years is not. A large percentage of tech folk are highly mobile and as such, florida sinking in even 20 years will not dissuade them from moving here as the vast majority of them are renters anyways. I dont doubt its something to think about and sealevel is definitely rising, I just was contradicting your answer that the one obvious answer is sea level rise. If you put it in percentages of why people move here, I doubt its even in a 5% range.
I have warning that a hurricane is coming, and can easily get my ass out of town when it gets there. I have no warning whatsoever (maybe 10 seconds if the early warning system bulks up) that "the big one" is coming, and my chances of dying in that are far greater.
The mean may be ~ 90 feet, but I doubt the median is. Lots of big hills, and lots of near sea-level flats. The article specifically talks about Mission Bay as an ideal place for development - it's all land reclaimed from the bay.
Miami, with an average elevation of 6 feet above sea level, will be underwater in the next several decades. Storm surges already threaten the keys and the coastal lagoon, and this pattern is only worsening as drainage on the mainland is impacted by industry and global climate patterns cause more energetic storms, and average sea level rise.
SF, with an average of ~90ft will be much safer from this particular threat - although California will at the current rate, without serious intervention, be desert, on similar timescales.
Long term investment does not make sense when you are faced with a risk of it all ending up in the sea.