Jesse M. Keenan

Jesse M. Keenan is an Associate Professor of Real Estate within the faculty of the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a globally recognized thought leader, Jesse’s research focuses on the intersection of climate change adaptation and the built environment, including aspects of design, engineering, regulation, planning and financing. He has previously advised on matters concerning the built environment for agencies of the U.S. government, governors, mayors, Fortune 500 companies, technology ventures, community enterprises and international NGOs. Jesse formerly served as the Area Head for Real Estate and Built Environment on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Fellow of Science, Technology and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government; and, as the Research Director of the Center for Urban Real Estate on the faculty of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Keenan is the author or editor of a number of books on cities, housing, real estate and climate change, including NYC 2040: Housing the Next One Million New Yorkers (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Climate Adaptation Finance and Investment in California (Routledge, 2018), which was awarded Amazon's 'Best Of' Award for "The Best Business and Leadership Books of 2018." He is the co-editor of the books, Blue Dunes: Climate Change by Design (2nd Edition)(Columbia University Press, 2017) and North American Climate Adaptation: Fostering Resilience and a Regional Capacity to Adapt (Springer, 2017), which was published in both English and German. With colleagues from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he is the co-editor of the forthcoming book, COVID-19, Systematic Risk and Resilience (Springer, 2021). Jesse is the also the co-author of a variety of design research monographs, including, Mobility Oriented Design: The Case for Miami’s Metrorail (Office of Urbanization, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2019); Adapting Miami (Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2020); and, Multiple Miamis (Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2020).

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Jesse’s research has been published in Science, Environmental Research Letters, Environmental Science and Policy, Environment Systems and Decisions, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, Natural Hazards Review, Climatic Change, Ocean & Coastal Management, Journal of Water and Climate Change, Architectural Science Review, Building Research & Information, Enquiry: Journal of Architectural Research, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, Social Research: an International Quarterly, International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, International Journal of Sustainable Urban Development, Journal of Extreme Events, the Wharton Real Estate Review, Projections: MIT Journal of Urban Planning, the American Bar Association, Cambridge University Press, and Reuters, among others.

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He has been cited as an authority by national and international media, including on-air on Bloomberg TV, CBS News, CCTV (China), CNBC, DW-TV (Germany), Financial Times (U.K.), France 2 (France), KBS (Korea), NBC News, PBS, Reuters TV, TEDx, The Weather Channel, TVO (Canada), and Univision. Jesse’s research has been widely covered by the global media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New Yorker, CNN, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg News, Popular Science, MIT Technology Review, Businessweek, Fortune, BBC, Reuters, Associated Press, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and the Financial Times, among others.

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Jesse formerly served as the Chair and Vice-Chair for the U.S. Community Resilience Panel for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, a federal interagency initiative formerly under the Obama White House Climate Action Plan, and as editorial team co-lead for the Built Environment at the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit at climate.gov. Jesse previously served as a member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Regional Disaster Sheltering and Housing Recovery Planning Team and as an appointed member of Mayor Bloomberg’s NYC Task Force for Building Resiliency. Jesse served on the Climate Change Working Group for the 4th Regional Plan for NYC where he developed the Regional Resilience Trust Fund and co-authored the climate change section of the award winning plan. He formerly served as Chair of Climate Adaptation Finance for IPCC Cities and as a Review Editor (Built Environment and Transportation chapters) of the 4th U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA4), and current serves as a Review Editor (buildings) for WG III (AR 6) for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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He formerly served as a Research Advisor for Secretary Bill Richardson; as a Research Advisor for Climate Adaptation for Governor Jerry Brown’s Office of Planning and Research for the State of California; and, as a Research Advisor to Governor Charlie Baker's Executive Office for Energy and the Environment for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. From 2018-2020, He served as a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF) where he led the bank’s first major research initiative in climate adaptation. This research culminated in the edited volume, Strategies to Address Climate Change Risk in Low- and Moderate-Income Communities (FRBSF, 2019), which The New York Times described “one of the most specific and dire accountings of the dangers posed to businesses and communities in the United States...”(October 17, 2019). From 2019-2020, he served as a Special Government Employee Advisor to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where he co-led research efforts evaluating the impacts of climate change on financial stability. In this capacity, he served as an elected co-editor of the publication, Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System (CFTC, 2020) — the first major climate change publication by a U.S. financial regulator.

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Jesse was among the first scholars to study the relationship between climate change and real estate, including the first to publish peer reviewed evidence of the existence of a climate change signal in a real estate market and in a mortgage market. Among other contributions, Jesse coined the term 'Climate Gentrification' at a public lecture to the New York City Bar Association in January of 2014. His theory of Climate Gentrification has gone on to shape a global discourse on the relationship between climate change, social equity and applied economics. Finally, Jesse’s work bridging the art and science of the built environment includes contributions to exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Jesse has the distinction of being the first person to have exhibited an excel spreadsheet at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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Keenan serves as Of Counsel to the law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP and as an advisor to Silicon Valley technology firm of Jupiter Intelligence. He holds degrees in the law (J.D., LL.M.) and science (M.Sc.) of real estate and the built environment, including a Ph.D. from the Delft University of Technology.

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Credentials

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• Associate Professor of Real Estate, School of Architecture, Tulane University
• Visiting Scholar, Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania
• U.S. Delegate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Advisor, Jupiter Intelligence
• Former Area Head and Faculty for Real Estate and the Built Environment, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
• Former Fellow of Science, Technology, and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• Former Research Director and Faculty of the Center for Urban Real Estate, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
• Former Chair and Vice-Chair for the U.S. Community Resilience Panel for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, under the Obama White House Climate Action Plan
• Former Research Advisor for Climate Adaptation for Governor Jerry Brown’s Office of Planning and Research for the State of California
• Former Research Advisor to Governor Charlie Baker's Executive Office for Energy and the Environment for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Former Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• Former Climate Risk Advisor for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

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