Bonding out the future: Tracing the politics of urban climate finance in Miami, Florida

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, city governments have increasingly turned to financial markets to help pay for elements of their resilience plans. The techno-utopian zeal of the plans and related financing mechanisms has led some scholars to read both as diagnostic of the “post-political” urban condition. This paper engages these concerns through the case of the Miami Forever Bond, a novel $400 million bond that pays for an initial round of resilient infrastructure in Miami, Florida. Bringing social studies of finance and racial capitalism scholarship to bear on the case, I argue that the bond helps constitute and formalize a terrain of struggle over the city’s future and its longstanding “infrastructural investments in whiteness.” The case thus belies a straightforward reading of urban climate finance as diagnostic of the post-political urban condition. It also points to a need to revisit prominent modes of inquiry on, and recognition of, the politics of urban climate finance. Thus, in the conclusion I reflect on how the approach developed here can be used to (1) analyze actually existing urban politics as they increasingly transpire under the banner of climate finance and (2) aid in growing scholarly calls to pinpoint possibilities for climate-linked repair.