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Urban Climates
- neves 9y agoWhat would be an effective way to reduce cities heat? Just plant more trees? Special roof top materials?
- faitswulff 9y agoCombine the two: rooftop gardens. Chicago has been pretty successful encouraging the development of green roofs with grants and the like: https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dcd/supp_info/sustainable_development.html https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dcd/supp_info/su...
- Retric 9y agoEnergy efficiency is also important as tall buildings can use significantly more energy than they receive in sunlight.
- mlinksva 9y agoAlso special pavement materials and decrease urban footprint https://www.epa.gov/heat-islands/heat-island-cooling-strategies https://www.epa.gov/heat-islands/heat-island-cooling-strateg... Replacing parking lots seems like the most obvious win all around to me.
- twobyfour 9y agoEven repainting roofs from black to white can make a major difference for minimal cost. Planting trees is great in many ways (quality of life and air quality in addition to heat mitigation) but is pricier. It can also take several years to "bear fruit" (even for non fruit-bearing trees ;-) because generally you plant saplings, which can take decades to grow to a size where they provide significant shade. NYC hust completed an initiative to plant a million new trees, and it's barely made a dent in the amount of treeless sidewalks, let alone unshaded space in the city. It would have been nice if the article had made more concrete recommendations, tho, I agree.
- BrendanD 9y agoSod roofs
- c3833174 9y agoBut roofs aren't really important at pedestrian level, I've seen many recent buildings having fixed external blinds, leaving an air gap between glass/concrete which should help draw up the hot air.
- samcheng 9y agoDoes anyone know how much the automobile directly and indirectly contributes to the heat island effect? Not only do you have thousands of vehicles burning thousands of gallons of petroleum, you also have low-albedo asphalt parking lots everywhere. Do car-friendly cities have a bigger heat-island effect than transit-friendly cities?
- stdbrouw 9y agoDid you at least attempt to read the article? It's in the first paragraph.
- samcheng 9y agoThe article mentions that the energy input from combustion is significantly higher than that from insolation in Manhattan in January, but also that the primary driver of the heat island effect is from building materials. Obviously asphalt roads and (especially) parking lots are an indirect contributor to low-albedo and low-permeability landscape. Taken together, how much of the heat island effect is due to the automobile? Would a pedestrian + transit city, with aggressive tree canopy, still be a heat island?