These 5 US Cities Are Most Likely to Withstand Climate Change — and You May Have to Move Here Soon
Published Aug. 2 2025, 1:45 p.m. ET
People walking through the busy intersection at 5th Avenue and 23rd Street in New York City on a summer day.
Planning the architecture of your city involves one major aspect: Resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back or return to the original state following a period of stress or strain, per PSU. Nowadays, "resilient city” has become a benchmarking tool that tells how well their city is prepared to deal with the aggravating crisis of climate change. The Zebra’s research team compiled a box of different factors and curated a list of the top five resilient cities in the US.
A man protecting himself from the sun's heat.
Climate change befalls upon the urban landscapes, in explosive bursts of prolonged droughts, rampant wildfires, and intense flooding, which test the greatest strengths and the resilience of the cities. The Zebra’s research team took into consideration several factors to compile this list of the top five resilient cities, including the number of high ozone layers each year, global sea level rise, trends of weather and climate disasters in the region, average daily particle pollution, and the EPA’s Cumulative Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) for Natural Hazards, a city’s ability to withstand and recover from a natural disaster.