Z.J. Taylor

My research investigates the intersection of real estate financialization and climate risk governance, focusing on how these processes shape urban vulnerability, resilience, and inequality. Real estate markets face simultaneous pressures of affordability and accessibility, while climate-related shocks – from flooding to extreme storms – intersect with finance systems to produce new geographies of risk and restructuring. I study how climate risks in the built environment are governed by finance institutions and how these practices shape uneven trajectories of urban climate action.

By tracing interactions between property insurance, mortgage lending, institutional real estate investment, and public adaptation finance, I examine how financialized housing systems both respond to and reproduce urban vulnerabilities. This work advances understanding of housing justice, socio-environmental inequality, and risk governance. My contribution is to reveal how global financial processes, local housing market dynamics and urban planning processes intersect under climate change, placing these intersections at the center of debates on urban futures.

Over the last decade, my research has evolved through successive projects in different urban and institutional contexts. As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven, my work compared how financial institutions adopt climate risk expertise across Miami, Rotterdam, and Singapore, for example. Since 2020, I have further developed these themes with a growing focus on team science and transdisciplinary action research. As co-lead of the Red&Blue: Real Estate Development & Building in Low Urban Environments program, I conduct research on climate-resilient urban development in the Netherlands in collaboration with 30+ public and private partners. I also lead an initiative on climate risk and finance in the Netherlands at Resilient Delta, a joint platform of TU Delft, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus Medical Center. Through this work, I convene cross-sector expert meetings, guide a portfolio of action research projects, and sit in advisory groups such as the Dutch Central Bank Platform for Sustainable Finance Work Group on Climate Adaptation.

My academic research has been published in journals including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Economic Geography, and Environment and Planning A. In 2025, I co-edited special issues on urban climate risk and finance in the Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of City Climate Policy & Economy, and City. Alongside academic writing, I have contributed to policy-oriented outputs via the Climate and Community Institute, C40 Cities, and Urban Land Institute. My research has been featured in international and Dutch media outlets including the New York Times, Economist, and NRC.

• Urban climate finance
• Real estate development and finance
• Urban governance, with a focus on land and propery regimes
• Urban climate adaptation and mitigation
• Relational and comparative geographical analysis
• Transdisciplinary research methodologies

Prior to joining the Department of Management in the Built Environment at TU Delft, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven. I hold degrees in urban studies, geography, and planning from the University of California-Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and the University of Leeds.