Crumbling Land
A study of climate migration's impact on property and sovereignty in North America
June 4–August 1, 2026
New York NY 10002
United States
Hours: Thursday–Saturday 2–6pm
group@citygroup.nyc
As climate change accelerates, governments are organizing the abandonment or relocation of communities that can no longer be sustained. Houses are being demolished, farmland left to rewild, levees removed to restore floodplains, roads unpaved or removed, and whole communities relocated to higher ground. These acts of urban triage are known by a variety of euphemisms, including managed retreat, adaptive retreat, managed realignment, community-led relocation, planned relocation, and graceful withdrawal.
Common among most relocation initiatives is the “buyout”, through which governments purchase disaster-afflicted or vulnerable properties from private landowners, who must relocate (ideally) to less vulnerable areas upon accepting compensation. Structures are then relocated or demolished, lots transferred to public ownership, and redevelopment permanently prohibited. Since 1988, FEMA has funded the buyout of over 43,000 residential and commercial properties across the United States, with state and municipal programs removing thousands more.
The landscapes left in the wake of these initiatives are an inversion of the frontier mythology that has long fortified assumptions of permanence, ownership, and sovereignty across the continent. Where once property ownership was viewed as the ultimate expression of personal autonomy and Manifest Destiny, the pressures of climate change are now forcing homeowners to accept a government check, leave their homes to be bulldozed, and watch the bounds of their property slowly return to nature.
As climate change accelerates, buyout sites which pepper suburbs and towns across the continent may loosen from old frameworks of either private or public ownership. Across spaces where neither the state nor the private actors retain the capacity or interest to enforce their ownership, new common grounds are emerging by default.
Crumbling Land documents the stories and remnants of communities across North America which the processes of “Managed Retreat” have quietly removed from the map. The project emerges in part from fieldwork conducted across more than 30 relocated or deconstructed communities in 10 states and provinces between 2024 and 2026.
Explore the project at crumbling.land
