Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Change

A Zoom webinar with journalist Mario Alejandro Ariza discussing his new book Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Change.

Purchase of a ticket is required for participation. The $30 ticket includes the book which you can pick up curbside (We will send you an email when the book is ready for pickup) or have shipped to you via USMail, tax, and the Zoom meeting. The book's publication date  is July, 14th. Complete the ticket purchase and we will get you the book when it is available. The Zoom link will be sent one day prior to the event.

About Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Change:

Miami is a crossroads—a subtropical enclave of immigrants—at a crossroads. In this city, your Venezuelan Uber driver is an asylum seeker who used to work as a civil engineer. Your nurse left Haiti after the earthquake. Your new neighbor fled the US Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria. Your best friend is the child of Cuban exiles. And when you tell them about Miami and climate change, they all want to know how much time the city has left before it floods. Disposable City: Miami's Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe by journalist Mario Alejandro Ariza is a deeply-reported personal investigation into the present and future effects of climate change in the city affectionately known as “The Magic City”.

Few major cities in the United States stand to lose as much, as soon, as Miami. Likely to be partially underwater by the end of the century, its residents are already experiencing tidal flooding, failing septic systems, and climate driven displacement. In Disposable City Ariza not only shows these examples of what climate change already looks like in the place he calls home, he also paints a picture of what Miami will look like 100 years from now, and details how that future has been shaped by the city's uneven socioeconomic landscape. 

Miami may currently be on the front lines of climate change, but Ariza warns that the battle it's fighting today is coming for the rest of the U.S.—and the rest of the world—far sooner than we could have imagined even a decade ago. Disposable City is a thoughtful and vibrant portrait of a city whose unique culture might soon succumb to a watery death—and ultimately a call to save it.

Read the New York Times review of Disposable City here. 

From Kirkus Reviews: "A forceful depiction of a global crisis viewed through the lens of one of the world's most vulnerable cities."

Mario Alejandro Ariza grew up in Santo Domingo and Miami, where he lives currently. His work has appeared in outlets such as The Atlantic, The Believer, the Miami New Times, and The New Tropic. He is featured in Sinking Cities, a PBS documentary series on the threat of climate change and currently works as the Federal Courts Reporter for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Mario holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Miami and a Master’s degree in Hispanic Cultural Studies from Columbia University.