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Urban heat solutions

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Glass building and tree cover
Fahroni/Shutterstock

Introduction

During heat waves, the highest temperatures are often found in urbanized areas. By 2070, 3.5 billion people will be heavily affected by heat, 1.6 billion of whom will live in urban areas (Chi Xu et al. 2020). Rising temperatures can negatively impact vulnerable people, workers, infrastructure and even GDP.

As the world warms, there is an urgent need to find ways to prevent the worse. Heat is a growing global challenge for communities large and small, across every development context, and requires collaboration amongst a wide array of disciplines and topic areas. In addition, newly sweltering countries can learn from heat-hardy ones about ways to stay cool.

This collection compiles stories from around the world on how to reduce heatwave risk.

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Knowledge base

Updates

These 7 cities are tackling heatwaves with innovative solutions

Almost 90 cities issued heat alerts in the extreme weather over the summer of 2022, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. But cities are learning to tackle extreme heat – sometimes with ingenious solutions.
World Economic Forum
Sky garden
Research briefs

Growing plants on buildings can reduce heat and produce healthy food in African cities

Persistently high temperatures and related heat stress are a big problem for people living in cities, especially in slums and informal settlements. It’s a problem that is expected to continue.
Conversation Media Group, the
Updates

How India's lattice buildings cool without air con

For centuries, India’s architecture featured intricate lattice structures. Now, as modern architects search for better ways to keep buildings cool, it’s making a comeback.
British Broadcasting Corporation
Traditional windcatchers in Iran help cool houses
Updates

Keep buildings cool as it gets hotter by resurrecting traditional architectural techniques – podcast

“Modern” styles of architecture using concrete and glass have often usurped local building techniques better suited to parts of the world with hotter climates. Now some architects are resurrecting traditional techniques to help keep buildings cool.
Conversation Media Group, the
Updates

City of Rochester to use drones to collect data on climate change impacts

The City of Rochester and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) will conduct a series of drone flights to better understand how higher temperatures caused by climate change affect some of the city’s most densely populated areas.
ABC News
Updates

How siestas might help Europe survive deadly heat waves

The snooze is optional. But as climate change intensifies, Northern European countries are seeing the appeal of Spain’s controversial midday break.
Wired, Condé Nast Digital
Updates

Boiling point

While the only long-term way to reduce the heat of cities is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and therefore start to reverse global warming, there are short-term solutions that can help make cities cooler and more livable.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
An elderly man drinks from a water bottle on a hot day
Updates

Heatwave relief: What can hot countries teach us about keeping cool?

From sunshades to white roofs, and cooling payments to checks on the vulnerable, here's how hot countries deal with heat risks.
Thomson Reuters Foundation, trust.org
Person sitting in front of Hellenic Parliament during a hot day in Athens, 2021
Interview

Eleni Myrivili: "The social glue of a city is key to heat resilience"

“One of the most important findings on urban resilience is that social resilience is often more important than physical resilience”.
Sun above a city
Updates

First-ever global chief heat officer announced at the World Urban Forum

At the World Urban Forum, UN-Habitat and the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing a partnership to address extreme urban heat by mainstreaming it in UN-Habitat’s work.
Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center