This summer, wildfires have caused evacuations across Canada and recently forced thousands of people to flee their homes in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some of the biggest impacts are being felt in the Prairies. In Manitoba, authorities recently issued evacuation orders for 15,000 people, mostly in the province’s north. Many evacuees are brought to larger cities like Winnipeg, overwhelming hotels and emergency housing.

In Canada, climate-driven migration is often imagined as a distant threat that affects others in the world. But these evacuations foreshadow a future where internal displacement becomes a regular feature of Canadian life — and where cities must rethink how they plan for disruption.

Events like the 88,000-person evacuation from Fort McMurray, Alta. in 2016 and the destruction of Lytton, B.C. in 2021 show how fast rural populations can be displaced.

Manitoba’s evacuations are among largest in recent memory, and many evacuated communities are remote and poorly connected to infrastructure. For them, evacuation may soon become an annual reality.

At the University of Hong Kong’s District Development Unit research lab (DDU), we develop architectural and........

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