About
Liz Koslov is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Environment and Sustainability, and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research employs an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach to analyze the politics of urban climate change adaptation, focusing particularly on debates surrounding responses to sea-level rise, flooding, and wildfire. At UCLA, she teaches courses that explore climate change through the built environment, the social life of sea-level rise, and issues of environmental and climate justice. A significant portion of Dr. Koslov's work critically examines the concept and process of "managed retreat" from high-risk areas. She is currently writing a book titled Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City, which follows homeowners in Staten Island, New York, who organized to seek buyouts after Hurricane Sandy that would permanently demolish parts of their neighborhoods. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she leads a collaborative project investigating the intersection of managed retreat and wildfire. Her additional research interests include the shifting meanings of urban natures, the politics of risk mapping, and the relationship between media and climate change. Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Koslov was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT. She earned her PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, where she was affiliated with the Institute for Public Knowledge and the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual-aid research collective studying climate change, disaster, inequality, and urban politics. She also holds an MSc in Culture and Society from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Communication and Spanish and Latin American Literatures from the George Washington University.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Economics
- Social Science
- Environmental planning
- Computer Science
- Environmental ethics
- Business
- Ecology
- Psychology
- Management science
- Environmental resource management
- Law
- Natural resource economics
- Environmental science
- Geography
Selected publications
Critically assessing the idea of wildfire managed retreat
Environmental Research Letters · 2024-03-28 · 8 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorCorrespondingThe AAG Review of Books · 2024-04-02
articleOpen accessMarket Orientation as an Environmental Hazard for Resettling Communities
2023-11-09
book-chapterOpen accessAbstract For better and worse, community resettlement as climate adaptation can disrupt regional land and property relations. Government officials in U.S. jurisdictions have raised concerns that resettlement threatens municipal budget stability by potentially decreasing the property tax base and stifling future development (Koslov in Public Culture 28:359–387, 2016; Shi and Varuzzo, Cities 100, 2020).
2023-11-09
book-chapterOpen accessAbstract Throughout this book, we suggest that understanding the law, particularly the law as it pertains to property, is important for pursuing justice within the context of relocation planning linked to climate change. As described in the previous chapters, communities inevitably confront and work within legal structures that frame relocation processes. These engagements with the law can be “successful” in carrying out physical relocation, but they can also be divisive, tiring, obfuscating, and lead to unsatisfactory and inequitable outcomes. All relocations are informed by community histories and interactions with government and legal structures.
Flood Buyout Relocations and Community Action
2023-11-09 · 1 citations
book-chapterOpen accessAbstract Voluntary buyouts are the primary way that relocation away from climate risk is currently carried out. Within the literature on buyouts, there is widespread consensus that interventions should ideally be conceptualized and administered as a “people-centered,” community-based disaster risk reduction strategy, with a focus on supporting populations who have been made vulnerable through unsustainable and inequitable development processes (Rumbach and Kudva in Risks, Hazards, and Crisis in Public Policy 2:1–23, 2011).
2023-11-09 · 8 citations
bookOpen accessThis open access book examines the use of relocation and resettlement processes in the USA as a means of responding to climate change
Correction to: People or Property
2023-12-18
book-chapterOpen access2023-11-13
otherOpen accessThis open access book explores the intersection of property law, relocation, and resettlement processes in the United States and among communities that grapple with migration as an adaptation strategy. As communities face the prospect of relocating because of rising seas, policy makers, disaster specialists, and community leaders are scrambling to understand what adaptation pathways are legally possible. While in its ideal application, law functions blindly and without variation, the authors find that legal contradictions come to bear on resettlement processes and place certain communities further in harm’s way. This book will unearth these contradictions in order to understand why successful community-based resettlement has presented such a challenge to communities that are experiencing increasing land deterioration as a result of climate change.
Property Law and Its Contradictions
2023-11-09
book-chapterOpen accessAbstract Despite its ubiquity, “property” is a difficult legal concept to pin down. The property regime and case law regarding property encompass many different forms of tangible and intangible property such as land and structures, intellectual property, hunting rights, personal possessions, and much more.
2023-11-09 · 1 citations
book-chapterOpen accessAbstract One premise of this book is that the most prominent federal solution and funding mechanism to support relocations linked to repetitive flooding is the use of voluntary buyouts and acquisitions of at-risk properties.
Frequent coauthors
- 10 shared
Daniel H. de Vries
- 10 shared
Alessandra Jerolleman
Loyola University New Orleans
- 10 shared
Chantel Comardelle
Clinique Saint Jean
- 10 shared
Elizabeth Marino
Oregon State University
- 10 shared
Simon Manda
University of Leeds
- 10 shared
Nathan Jessee
Princeton University
- 10 shared
Melissa Villarreal
- 4 shared
Éric Klinenberg
New York University
Education
- 2018
Ph.D., Urban Planning, Environment and Sustainability
University of California, Los Angeles
- 2011
M.A., Sociology
University of California, Los Angeles
- 2007
B.A., Sociology
University of California, Los Angeles
Awards & honors
- NSF Award for Research on Managed Retreat in Wildfire Zones
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