Western Sydney residents whose homes often get hotter inside than outside during heatwaves have learnt to be resourceful in adapting to the increasing heat.
The new city bears a colonial name and there are questions about locating it in the hottest part of Sydney, but we are also seeing all 3 tiers of government work together in an innovative way.
Very hot days in Western Sydney are typically 5 degrees hotter than parts of the city close to the coast and are becoming more common, but only in the west. Four climate drivers explain the difference.
Voters in the region have long been seen as caring more about their finances than green issues. But living through extreme heat, rain and floods has them focused on living with climate change.
Australian cities remain woefully unprepared for the more extreme weather we are already seeing with climate change. But some cities overseas stand out for having developed readymade solutions.
The first chief heat officers appointed in Australia are part of a global partnership that’s responding to the dangers of rising city temperatures and the need to manage the risks.
Urban plantings are part of the solution to living in warmer cities, but most tree and shrub species in the world’s cities will struggle too. The impacts on liveability could be huge.
Hot, humid population centers are becoming epicenters of heat risk as climate changes worsens. It’s calling into question the conventional wisdom that urbanization uniformly reduces poverty.
As our cities get hotter, rebuilding whole suburbs better suited to the heat is not an option. Instead, we can draw from the best examples of how to adapt neighbourhoods and behaviours.
At the peak of a summer heatwave in Adelaide, an aerial survey of land surface temperatures reveals just how much cooler neighbourhoods with good tree and vegetation cover can be.
Inner Melbourne alone has lost 2,000 street trees to major developments within a decade. Losing tree cover makes it even more difficult for our cities to cope with an increasingly tough climate.
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.