Urban Climate Adaptation

How should cities prepare to adapt residents and built environments to address the risks from climate change? The majority of my work in this area addresses the issue of rising temperatures in cities. The core motivating values behind adaptation is that how a community adapts should be defined and led by the community itself. Adaptation also needs to take into account historical inequity, marginalization, and trauma, and center healing and repair in communities.

Exposure to extreme heat in US cities causes hundreds of fatalities each year. Temperatures in cities is highly related to physical conditions that shape urban microclimates, such as: building massing, amount of impervious surfaces (such as concrete and asphalt), landscaping/tree cover, and material types. Social factors, such as age, race, income level, availability of access to air conditioning, and weatherization of housing stock increase the inequity of vulnerability that urban residents have to extreme heat events. We are currently working with the City of Roanoke to define an “extreme heat resilience infrastructure” within vulnerable neighborhoods to address these needs.

This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (Civic Innovation program), as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Environmental Literacy program.