Jesse M. Keenan is the Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Tulane University. In his upcoming book North: The Future of Post-Climate America, he outlines the complexities of America’s handling of climate change and its effects on not only migration, mitigation, and real estate, but also our institutions and societal fabric. Simultaneous conclusions: There are no climate havens, but adapt we will. Join us for the fascinating Unfrozen interview.

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Intro/Outro: “System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank report on reversal of the migration to the Sun Belt

“What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century” - The Atlantic

Climate gentrification: from theory to empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida

Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac, April 2016: Will Markets Absorb Climate Change?

A Climate Minsky Moment?

Mitigation vs adaptation vs resilience

Rachel Minnery’s efforts at the AIA to include climate adaptation as part of architects’ standards and duty of care

“Climate-proof Duluth” in the New York Times

There were never any climate havens: The Guardian

The lesson of Asheville: The flooding was the beginning of its role as a “receiving zone,” not the end

“Climate havens” = media clickbait

Marketing of Buffalo as a “climate haven” by Mayor Byron R. Brown

Alan Mallach’s Unfrozen take on reviving legacy cities

“This is about growth management and urban planning 101 at the regional and local level”

For many “climate havens” rhetoric is not about recruiting new residents; climate mobility is a rhetorical arm for the existing residents for core sustainability development.

“The Midwest will ultimately grow for the exact same reason the Sun Belt grew”

Storming the Wall by Todd Miller

The Climate Credit Score

Hurricane Pass, Pinellas County, Florida

“Sodom & Gorlando”

Climate intelligence arms race, e.g., AlphaGeo

Spencer Glendon – “The money is slow and dumb”

Just in time for Halloween comes a spooky story of speculation and specters in the world of real estate. Joshua Comaroff, a professor at National University of Singapore, is the author of Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore. He tells Unfrozen that, despite being one of the most assertively modern nations in the world, mysticism and geomancy are very much part of the design and construction process in the island nation-state. Woe be to the development (and its occupants) that does not undertake elaborate rituals and pay the requisite respect (and sometimes burnt “hell money” offerings) to ghosts that may be resident on the site. We hope you enjoy this tale of spirits and the material world…

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Hell money, in sextillion-dollar denominations

Feng shui

People’s Action Party

Ghost Month (Ghost Festival)

Bomoh (Malay spirit doctor)

Winchester Mystery House

ION Orchard

Gateway, by I.M. Pei

AI Ghosts

John Calvin’s hatred of speculation

The Clayford Sisters

Thanatechnology

Depending on how you look at it, it is either a great or rough time out there for speculative fiction, as reality continues to bite at the heels of even the most dystopian visions. Jason Tester is a futurist with a knack for telling prescient stories about our imminent urban realities, in a startlingly graphic way. The visually compelling Insurrection: an American Future predicted troop deployments in San Francisco in early January 2025; by June, a real-life version of that story began unfolding in Los Angeles, then Washington, Chicago, and Portland. Tester gazes into the abyss with Unfrozen, in another episode a bit too close for comfort.

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Intro/Outro: “System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Institute for the Future

What Is The Insurrection Act? Here’s What Happens If Trump Invokes Law

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Frogs of Portland

Ilana Lipsett

Meta Ray-Bans

Frend.AI

ImmigrationOS

San Francisco Proposition E - Police drone authorization

The beleaguered Whole Foods on Market

ICE Ramming in Chicago

Grand juries say no to sandwich crimes

DDS Waymo Jam

Barbara Walter at UC San Diego: How Civil Wars Start

Abyss gazing

UrbanistAI

One Big Beautiful Bill

One Big Beautiful Aftermath

Rem Koolhaas is nothing if not enigmatic, which makes him and his first major built work, the Villa dal’Alva, Paris (1990), an ideal first subject of the “Gumshoe” series of architectural mysteries. Cutting through the conventions of academic jargon and trade press, The House of Dr. Koolhaas reopens the “cold case” of Koolhaas and examines evidence in a pulp-detective novel format. Unfrozen turns the lamp back on writer/editor team Francoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver.

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Gumshoe Architectural Mystery Series

Thomas Weaver (AA Files)

Villa d’Alva, OMA

S, M, L, XL

Luis Bunuel

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

Mannerism

Madelon Vreisendorp with Teri Wehn-Damisch: The Film of Delirious New York

Countryside, The Future

Dali’s paranoiac-critical method

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Next up: Oscar Neimayer’s Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, by Littell Shaw

Then: The Parthenon

Then: Case Study House by Craig Ellwood

Poelzig’s I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt

Raymond Chandler

James Ellroy

Dismayed by the destruction and death in Gaza? Fear not, the wizards at Boston Consulting Group have a plan – a 38-slide deck that will Make Gaza GREAT Again. It’s a molten nugget of consultant-speak, SimCity planning moves, weirdly proportioned AI slop renderings, and tokenized real estate transactions that place a thin veil of “solutioneering” over what looks an awful lot like ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry – it will all be covered by private investment and all kinds of familiar corporations in the tech, design, construction and security businesses are invited, whether they know it or not. Our hot take on this hottest of messes.

Discussed:

Washington Post article Wall Street Journal article Financial Times article GREAT Trust deck Pre-GREAT Trust Hebrew version of the deck Gaza Riviera TikTok video Scarlett Johansson on SNL: Complicit Boston Consulting Group Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Tony Blair Institute Ebenezer Howard Baron von Haussmann SimCity Paul Romer’s Charter Cities Shout back to Episode 92, The Hidden Globe AECOM Studio Boeri Architetti IMEC = India-Middle East Corridor UN rapporteur communique on Gaza report: Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide

A former president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Carl Elefante has led the field in finding common ground between two things seemingly in conflict: sustainable design and historic preservation. He is a Principal Emeritus with Quinn Evans and a charter member of the Climate Heritage Network. In addition to his work on the intersection of historic preservation and sustainability, he has spent decades focusing on building-sector decarbonization, community vitality, and urbanism. His new book is Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future.

Intro/Outro:

“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

The Greenest Building is the One That is Already Built

Work and the City, by Frank Duffy

MASS Design Group

Kéré Architecture

Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism, by Julia Watson

Empire State Building retrofit vs One World Trade Center: Both LEED Gold

Passive House

PassiveLogic

WUFI Modeling

Susan Roth

Mini-splits

Hillary Brown, Professor Emerita of Architecture at the City College of New York, joins Unfrozen to discuss her book Revitalize | Resettle, which explores how climate migration and rural revitalization can solve interlinked crises. Brown emphasizes that large U.S. cities alone cannot absorb climate-displaced populations due to infrastructural limits and rising costs. Instead, she proposes strategic resettlement in small towns and “micropolitan areas”—places often overlooked but rich in cultural value and potential.

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Intro/Outro:

“24-Hour Limes” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Hero towns leading the charge to accept climate migrants and flourish:

• Clinton, IA: Brownfield redevelopment and corridor revitalization
• Gorham and Milan, NH: Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program
• Madison, IN: Main Street Program
• Morris, NY: Livingston County Development Group
• Norfolk, NE: North Fork Whitewater Park
• Ord, NE: Vibrant Future Fund
• Rock Port, MO: Wind Capital Group – First town in U.S. to be 100% wind-powered
• West Windsor, VT: Ascutney revitalization

Jesse Keenan – Climate-Proof Duluth

New York State Small-Town Revitalization

T-Mobile hometown grants

Parag Khanna, ecstatic nomad

Chicago’s Wrigley Building, constructed in 1921, is the “whited sepulcher” of Michigan Avenue, gleaming in terra cotta like the rows of teeth ostensibly cleansed by Wrigley’s Chewing Gum, the company that built the Beaux-Arts edifice. But its extravagant looks are only part of the story. Unfrozen hosts Robert Sharoff and William Zbaren, who wrote and photographed the new book from Rizzoli, The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon, to hear the rest.

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Intro / Outro:

“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

• Graham, Anderson, Probst & White
• Charles Beersman
• Julia Morgan
• Arts Club of Chicago
• Joe Mansueto
• Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, Helmut Jahn, 2011
• John Vinci
• Phillip Wrigley
• William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson
• Girilda Tower, Seville
• Chateau Chambord, Loire Valley, France
• New York Municipal Building, Stanford White, 1914
• The Carter Family
• Tribune Tower, Howells and Hood, 1925
• London Guarantee Building, Alfred Alschuler, 1923
• 333 North Michigan Avenue, Holabird & Roche, 1928
• Belden-Stratford Hotel, Meyer Fridstein, 1923
• Waldor-Astoria Chicago, Lucien Lagrange, 2009
• Chicago Fire Stadium
• Stanley Tigerman
• Studio Blue, Cheryl Towler Weese