Critical Infrastructure, Climate Disasters, and Cultural Survival: Policy Failures and Community Displacement in the Era of Managed Retreat

Climate disasters are currently changing territory around the world by showing large inequalities that exist in infrastructure systems, governance arrangements, and development pathways. In many cases, climate risk response strategies like managed retreat have been framed as practical approaches to respond to increasing climate disasters. However, these responses also hide other important social, cultural, and spatial consequences. This paper will evaluate the interrelationship between critical infrastructure, climate disasters, and cultural survival in relation to managed retreat. Specifically, the authors argue that managed retreat has evolved as a politically mediated process rather than a neutral adaptation strategy. More specifically, managed retreat has displaced marginalized communities and preserved areas of economic value. A qualitative comparative analysis was conducted in three different locations: California wildfires, Bangladesh flooding and river erosion, and coastal erosion and sea level rise in Spain, to analyze how infrastructure investment, removal, and redevelopment can influence patterns of displacement and cultural loss. This paper incorporates insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography, Political Ecology, and Urban Political Economy to create an analytical framework of climate vulnerability that includes historical path dependencies, power dynamics, and market‐based forms of governance. The findings indicate that climate disasters facilitate territorial restructuring and accelerate the process of selective protection, infrastructural abandonment, and climate gentrification. Therefore, managed retreat has been identified as a policy of uneven adaptation, which reinforces existing regional inequalities and disrupts cultural continuity. This research also indicates the importance of community agency and cultural infrastructure in achieving equitable resilience and argues for the need for justice‐oriented and participatory adaptation policies. Additionally, this research highlights the importance of cultural survival and regional inequality and provides policy‐relevant contributions to ongoing academic debates in climate adaptation, critical infrastructure policy, and spatial justice.