After Hurricane Sandy, the world is suddenly far more aware of the threats faced by major cities as a result of climate chaos. A just released report details the cities most threatened by rising oceans. Another piece lists the cities most threatened in terms of the billions of dollars of damage likely to be inflicted.

Such measures of potential damage tend to ignore the differences within vulnerable city populations, and, even worse, to ignore cities such as Dhaka and Dakar, where many millions of people face inundation but where billions of dollars of capital investment are not necessarily at stake.