Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

Even as climate change exacerbates heat events across the globe, the experience of these events will be felt unevenly based on both built environment and social factors. In cities, Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) – urban areas that are significantly warmer than their surroundings chiefly because of concentrated heat emitted from the built environment – are central to this unevenness. Also, in the U.S., UHIs are far more likely to be in poor and minority neighborhoods rather than in affluent white neighborhoods (Hsu et al, 2021). Old industrial or ‘legacy’ cities, facing persistent population loss, economic decline, sparsely populated cores and historic racial segregation offer a particular set of challenges when addressing climate change and heat events. Using Toledo, Ohio, as a case study, we take a long view to examine whether residents’ current experience of heat might have any relationship to historically unjust urban planning and investment practices. First, we critically review the city’s history of planning, with a focus on redlining. We then map social and demographic factors such as poverty, unemployment, and home ownership rates. Onto this, we map the built environment, current average temperatures, and tree cover. Analyzing these maps in the context of the city’s planning history will help us understand if and how historic inequities continue to play out across neighborhoods, in this case, with reference to heat. Hsu, A., Sheriff, G., Chakraborty, T. et al. Disproportionate exposure to urban heat island intensity across major US cities. Nat Commun 12, 2721 (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22799-5#citeas