Here in Poland, the joys of Spring weather and growth are beginning.
You can see the pep in people’s steps pick up and beaming faces in days increasing with sunlight. Winter is pretty heavy here – and I say that having lived in in Alaska and multiple Nordic cities.
Around the bend from this is Summer, a time when much of our content here at Pedestrian Space is focused on heat issues and the urban heat island effect.
As we understand, Europe is one of the fastest-heating regions in the world.
The dangerous rise of urban heat issues is an environmental, public health, and walkability issue.
We are interested and concerned in how thermal comfort (or lack thereof) can affect pedestrian space and mobility as well as how problems of urban heat ultimately bring into question a test of survival for humanity- the increasingly ‚urbanizing species’.
If we are to survive, our urban environments need to be resilient to increasing urban heat. Solutions already exist. We need to apply them.
Photos (all mine) show mainly cooling features for urban environments with nature-based elements in focus. A few photos convey urban heat island scenes.