Berlin Least Vulnerable to Climate Change Risks - Mansion Global

Berlin Least Vulnerable to Climate Change Risks - Mansion Global

What do Berlin, Toronto, Paris and Madrid’s real estate markets have in common? They’re at the lowest risk overall to climate change, according to a new Climate Resilient Cities Index from Savills.

The report, released Wednesday, ranked the top of the 23 largest, wealthiest and most populous cities included in the analysis, which measured each city’s climate risk and the resilience of its real estate to those risks.

While the four metropolises may still be vulnerable to “significant climate hazards,” their geographic position, proportion of green real estate and the plans city authorities have in place to mitigate risk, make them the most resilient, the real estate firm said.

The index highlights “some of the cities which are most at risk of climate-related events and whether real estate in those cities is likely to be resilient to that risk,” Paul Tostevin, director of Savills World Research, said in the report.

“While there may be little possibility of altering the former given that risk is largely location-dependent, more can be done to increase real estate resiliency by adopting innovative design and build practices and delivering mitigating infrastructure—building storm drains to reduce flooding, for example,” he added.

Jakarta, Shanghai and Cairo came in at the bottom of the list.

Berlin, which ranked as the best-performer, has its location to thank for its low risk of climate change-related events. It also scored strongly on real estate resilience due to its low share of housing stock considered to be at likely risk from climate-related damage as well as one of the highest proportions of green-certified buildings, the report said.

“Even in cities which have ‘good’ real estate resilience, a lot of work is still required to reduce carbon emissions and upgrade assets to higher sustainability standards,” Mr. Tostevin added.