Climate Vulnerability and Community Health: Identifying Greensboro Neighborhoods at Intersectional Risk

TL;DR

The paper addresses how climate risk and health burdens co-occur in urban neighborhoods, focusing on Greensboro, NC, to reveal environmental justice disparities. It develops an intersectional climate vulnerability index by integrating health, socioeconomic, and environmental indicators at the census-tract level and links these patterns to historical redlining. Using k-means and Ward’s hierarchical clustering, the study identifies four neighborhood typologies, with a critically high-risk cluster characterized by high flood exposure, extreme poverty, poor respiratory health, and aging housing stock. The results offer a targeted, place-based framework for policymakers to design integrated flood management, housing, and public health interventions to advance equitable urban resilience, with transferability to similar mid-sized Southern cities.

Abstract

This study develops an integrated, intersectional climate vulnerability assessment for Greensboro, North Carolina, a midsize city in the rapidly changing American Southeast. Moving beyond generalized mapping, we combine demographic, socioeconomic, health, and environmental data at the census tract level to identify neighborhoods where flood exposure, chronic health burdens, and social disadvantage spatially converge. Through k-means and hierarchical clustering, we identify four distinct neighborhood typologies, including a critically high-risk cluster characterized by high flood exposure, extreme poverty, poor respiratory health, and aging housing. The findings demonstrate that climate-related risks are not randomly distributed but systematically cluster in historically marginalized communities, revealing a clear environmental justice disparity. This place-based typology approach provides a targeted framework for policymakers to design integrated interventions that bridge flood management, public health, housing, and social services to build equitable urban resilience

Figures (14)

• Figure 1: Socioeconomic, health, housing, and environmental indicators used in the climate vulnerability assessment for Greensboro census tracts.
• Figure 2: Distribution of key health indicators across Greensboro census tracts.
• Figure 3: Distribution of key socioeconomic indicators across Greensboro census tracts.
• Figure 4: Scatter plots illustrating relationships between health outcomes and socioeconomic factors across census tracts.
• Figure 5: Correlation matrix of health, socioeconomic, housing, and demographic variables.