When Intel announced it was investing $28 billion to build two chip factories in Licking County, Ohio, two hours north of his city, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval took note. The mega-complex would surely be an economic boon for his state, but Pureval was most impressed by why the tech giant chose to build in the Ohio River Valley. “Two of the big reasons they chose that location were, number one, its access to fresh water, and number two, our climate resiliency — the fact that we’re impacted by climate change, but we’re not seeing the droughts, the wildfires and the hurricanes that a lot of other places are seeing,” Pureval told Smart Cities Dive. “Once a large investment like that was made with those considerations in mind, it became real for me to say that if private companies are making such a potentially risky bet on our region, that could be a harbinger for things to come.” Oliver Kroner, the director of Cincinnati’s Office of Environment and Sustainability, had been thinking about the city’s climate appeal since 2018, when he saw a map of the Hurricane Katrina diaspora showing that thousands of people had relocated from New Orleans to Cincinnati after the catastrophic storm. “It’s really hard to say the singular reason anyone moves or relocates,” he said. “But there are more and more and more people who I meet every day who came here either because they were forced away from their previous home due to a climate-related event or they considered climate resilience when they relocated.” With Pureval’s support and backing, the Cincinnati OES last month released the city’s Climate Migration Readiness Plan, which Kroner believes is the nation’s first municipal guide to preparing for climate refugees. Citing data showing that climate migration and broader domestic relocation trends