María Victoria Boix & Alejandro Saez Reale

Published in may 2023

Cities are experiencing a relentless temperature rise due to climate change and a sustained urban sprawl. This, in turn, is leading to more severe and long-lasting heat waves and higher urban heat island effect. Both heat sources behave synergistically, affecting severely our cities. The impacts are wide-ranging and profound, especially in terms of public health. Nowadays heat causes more deaths than any other extreme weather event in many developing and developed countries.  

However, these impacts are not felt equally by the entire population, but rather by the most vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, children, people with a prevalence of heart or mental illnesses, and people with economic, housing or social deficits, who are most exposed. Not surprisingly, the consequences are not limited to health, rising temperatures also cause wide economic burdens, and urban infrastructure disruptions. 

It is imperative to move towards risk-informed urban development. To promote urban heat resilience, we need to encourage urban planning that focuses on improving heat equity as well. By ensuring that heat mitigation and management strategies are distributed equitably across communities, and by posing a particular focus on the communities most vulnerable to high temperatures, local governments can protect themselves from heat impacts and associated losses and damages. Cities should invest in heat-resilient, low-carbon action plans at the earliest.  

These efforts should focus on investing in more resilient housing and health systems, providing improved thermal comfort and generating cooler public spaces, buildings and housing, promoting energy efficiency, using renewable energy sources, improving green infrastructure, and developing complementary innovative solutions to address the heat island effect.  

Cities must prioritize raising awareness among the population and train personnel and public officials on this new-but-dangerous phenomena. This requires a thorough assessment of the risks and vulnerabilities unique to each city to develop appropriate plans. By doing so, cities can effectively address the fundamental importance of combating climate change.  

“The only way to succeed in finding real, on-scale solutions and strategies to address extreme urban heat and its consequences is substantially improving awareness. We need to talk about it, invest in it, and work together: academia, civil society, private and public sector, both on the national and subnational levels, to create real resilient cities. No one can solve this challenge on their own; we need to work together to tackle climate change and thrive as humankind in a new, hotter environment, and we need to start now.”