Even without air conditioning, there are still many things you can do to prepare for extreme heat and stay comfortable on hot days.
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Air conditioning isn’t the answer for everyone, especially for residents of the less affluent – and often hotter – suburbs of our big cities. But there are other ways to make hot days more bearable.
Where’s the shade? Trees are not an immediate or whole answer to keeping cool.
Cameron Tonkinwise
Trees and the shade they provide are one of the best ways of cooling cities. But they also present challenges that are best resolved by managing this shared resource as part of an urban commons.
During a heatwave in late 2018, Cairns temperatures topped 35°C nine days in a row and sensors at some points in the CBD recorded 45°C.
The world’s fastest-growing cities are in the tropics. They are highly exposed to climate change, especially as urban heat island effects and humidity magnify the impacts of increasing heatwaves.
Increasing heat in Sydney and other Australian cities highlights the urgent need to apply our knowledge of how to create liveable low-carbon cities.
Taras Vyshnya/Shutterstock
The research has been done. The evidence is in. We know how to create cities that are sustainable, liveable and affordable. But we have yet to apply that knowledge widely across Australian cities.
Australian cities could lose some of their most common trees to climate change.
Jamen Percy/Shutterstock
Thirty tree species make up more than half of Australia’s urban forests. Some won’t survive climate change, so cities must plant a more diverse mix of the right species to preserve their tree cover.
Cairns Lagoon: as a good response to the tropical climate, it’s a very active place but with little business activity.
Silvia Tavares
Good urban design and walkability boost local economic activity by increasing public activity, but cities need to pay more attention to the effects of microclimates on streets and public spaces.
Two trends in Australia, an ageing population and warming climate, are increasing the threat that heatwaves pose to our health. Increasing vegetation cover is one way every city can reduce the risk.
A vine shade structure being installed in Cavenagh Street will help cool the hottest street in Darwin city centre.
Darwin’s climate is getting even hotter and it’s one of the main reasons people leave the city. A lot more can be done, though, to make our tropical cities safe, cool and enjoyable.
A residential rain garden in Portland’s Tabor to the River project.
City of Portland Government
How to move beyond the warm words about tackling urban heat islands to doing something about them.
The familiar images of high-rise development, looking north here from Surfers Paradise, tell only one part of the story of the Gold Coast.
Andrew Leach
Behind the built-up glitz of Surfers Paradise lies a deep history that has been written and overwritten in successive layers that have become thinner and thinner as time goes on.
‘Soft fall’ surfaces are widely used in play areas where children might fall, but can also get very hot in the sun, which undermines this safety benefit.
Brisbane City Council/Flickr
Commonly used surfaces in play areas, such as “soft fall” materials and Astroturf, can heat up to 80-100°C in the sun. This makes them a hazardous design choice, especially as the climate gets hotter.
The traditional backyard provides a retreat from the pressures of city life.
Australians are losing the backyards that once served as retreats from the stresses of city living. Our health is likely to suffer as cities become less green and much hotter.
Building the hotbox dream: another housing development in Western Sydney.
Katherine Gibson
Extreme heat divides people from the environment and from each other. So with the rapid densification of our cities, what kind of legacies are we building for future generations?
Whether it’s pressures of space or a warmer climate, which is affecting Melbourne’s elms, urban greening must respond to the challenges of 21st-century urban living.
Joe Castro/AAP
Greening cities that are becoming denser is a major challenge. City-dwellers’ health benefits from both well-designed green spaces and urban density, so we must manage the tensions between them.
Peak hour making you hot under the collar? It’s not just you.
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Do you ever feel that the weather is worse on the weekend? Well you might be right!
Upper Coomera is one of those fast-growing fringe suburbs that are hotter because of tightly packed housing with less greenery.
Daryl Jones/www.ozaerial.com.au/
Recently published research has found that the concentration of poorer people in hotter places is a real problem for cities’ capacity to cope with climate change.
Much of the ‘smart cities’ rhetoric is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight.
Ase from www.shutterstock.com
The rhetoric of ‘smart cities’ is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight. Truly smart and resilient cities need to be more in tune with the planet.
Some materials and surfaces radiate much more heat (red areas) than others, as can be seen in this thermal image of Arncliffe Street in Wolli Creek, Sydney.
Hot spots occur at the scale of where people live – the building, the street, the block – which means urban design and building materials have profound implications for our health and well-being.