Urban heat is a severe and intensifying issue in cities worldwide. Many of the solutions we need are not super innovative, amazing new ideas. We need some old-school wisdom and common sense amplified radically.
It’s amazing (and devastating) to me how often I read about urban heat islands and how such environments have a total lack of greenery, shaded spaces, and other biophilic, nature-based elements. These elements have not been planned for and sometimes are outright de-prioritized.
Meanwhile, we do have many examples to look to of urban environments where nature-based elements have been prioritized, with public health, environmental health, and thermal conditions in mind. We can look to and learn from these cases.
We are having some warmer temperatures this weekend, where I am in east-central Poland, and then it will progressively get chillier. Autumn is coming.
But like clockwork, every year now it seems, Summer (or even Spring) brings news of ‘record-breaking heat’ in cities across the world.
The discussion on and awareness of the dangers of urban heat intensifies, and is also greatly benefited by a solid diversity of practitioners and experts working on the problem. Urban planners, urban designers, public health experts, geographers, climatologists, environmental psychologists, energy experts, resilience experts, and more.
I have centered the role of nature in a lot of my media on walkability at Pedestrian Space, and I look forward to continuing to do so, as well as collaborating on multidisciplinary teams to help bring forth and spotlight solutions.
-Annika
