12162020 Houstons Flood Is a Design Problem - The Atlantic

12/16/2020 Houston's Flood Is a Design Problem - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/why-
cities-flood/538251/ 1/6
RICHARD CARSON / REUTERS
Floods cause greater property damage and more deaths than
tornadoes or hurricanes.
And Houston’s �ood is truly a disaster of biblical proportions:
trillion gallons of water on the city within two days, and much
more might fall before
Harvey dissipates, producing as much as 60 inches of rain.
Pictures of Harvey’s runoff are harrowing, with interstates
turned to sturdy and mature
rivers. From Katrina to Sandy, Rita to Tōhoku, it’s easier to
imagine the �ooding caused
by storm surges wrought by hurricanes and tsunamis. In these
cases, the �ooding
problem appears to be caused by water breaching shores,
examples reinforce the idea that �ooding is a problem of
keeping water out—either

through fortunate avoidance or engineering foresight.
But the impact of �ooding, particularly in densely developed
areas like cities, is far more
constant than a massive, natural disaster like Harvey exposes.
�ood
T E C H N O L O GY
Houston's Flood Is a Design Problem
It’s not because the water comes in. It’s because it is forced to
leave
again.
I A N B O G O S T AU G U S T 2 8 , 2 0 1 7
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http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/floods/faq/
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/disasters-by-
type.aspx
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-
gang/wp/2017/08/27/texas-flood-disaster-harvey-has-unloaded-
9-trillion-tons-of-water/?utm_term=.39678921c070
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake
_and_tsunami
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https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ian-bogost/
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isn’t because the water comes in, not exactly. It’s because the
pavement of civilization
forces the water to get back out again.
* * *
� rm surge from
hurricanes, the runoff
from snowmelt, the inundation of riverbanks. But all these
examples cast �ooding as an
occasional foe out to damage human civilization. In truth,
�ooding happens constantly,
in small and large quantities, every time precipitation falls to
earth. People just don’t
tend to notice it until it reaches the proportions of disaster.
R E C O M M E N D E D R E A D I N G
Under normal circumstances, rain or snowfall soaks back into
the earth after falling. It
gets absorbed by grasslands, by parks, by residential lawns, by
anywhere the soil is
exposed. Two factors can impede that absorption. One is large
quantities of rain in a

water spreads out in
accordance with
ground so it cannot
soak up water in the �rst place. And that’s exactly what cities
do—they transform the
land into developed civilization.
Roads, parking lots, sidewalks, and other pavements, along with
asphalt, concrete,
brick, stone, and other building materials, combine to create
impervious surfaces that
resist the natural absorption of water. In most of the United
States, about 75 percent of
its land area, less than 1 percent of the land is hardscape. In
cities, up to 40 percent is
impervious.
water hits pavement, it
it �ows wherever the
Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine
A D R I E N N E L A F R A N C E

K A I T LY N T I F FA N Y
A person
dressed in a
17th-
century
plague
K A I T LY N T I F FA N Y
A series
of browser
tabs, with
flames in
the center
https://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2011.php
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebo
ok-doomsday-machine/617384/
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/adrienne-lafrance/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebo
ok-doomsday-machine/617384/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/pande
mic-cosplay-tumblr-plaguecore/617369/
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/kaitlyn-tiffany/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/pande
mic-cosplay-tumblr-plaguecore/617369/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/reddit-
ovarit-the-donald/617320/
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/kaitlyn-tiffany/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/reddit-
ovarit-the-donald/617320/

grade takes it. To account for that runoff, people engineer
systems to move the water
away from where it is originally deposited, or to house it in
process—the policy, planning, engineering, implementation, and
maintenance of urban
water systems—is called stormwater management.
According to my Georgia Institute of Technology colleague
Bruce Stiftel, who is chair
of the school of city and regional planning and an expert in
environmental and water
policy governance, stormwater management usually entails
channeling water away from
impervious surfaces and the structures built atop them. In other
words, cities are built
on the assumption that the water that would have been absorbed
back into the land
they occupy can be transported away instead.
Like bridges or skyscrapers designed to bear certain loads,

stormwater management
systems are conceived within the limits of expected behavior—
such as rainfall or
riverbank overrun events that might happen every 10 or 25
years. When these intervals
are exceeded, and the infrastructure can’t handle the rate and
volume of water, �ooding
is the result.
Houston poses both a typical and an unusual situation for
stormwater management.
an epitome of the urban
sprawl characterized by American exurbanism, where available
land made development
easy at the edges. Unlike New Orleans, Houston is well above
sea level, so �ooding risk
from storm surge inundation is low. Instead, it’s rainfall that
poses the biggest threat.
A series of slow-moving rivers, called bayous, provide natural
drainage for the area. To
account for the certainty of �ooding, Houston has built
drainage channels, sewers,
outfalls, on- and off-road ditches, and detention ponds to hold
or move water away

from local areas. When they �ll, the roadways provide overrun.
from Houston that show wide, interstate freeways transformed
into rivers look like the
cause of the disaster, but they are also its solution, if not an
evacuating Houston, a metropolitan area of 6.5 million people,
would have been a
to sit in gridlock on the
thoroughfares and freeways designed to become rivers during
�ooding would have
doomed them to death by water.
* * *
Accounting for a 100-year, 500-year, or “million-year” �ood,
as some are calling
Harvey’s aftermath, is difficult and costly. Stiftel con�rms that
it’s almost impossible to
design for these “maximal probable �ood events,” as planners
call them. Instead, the
hope is to design communities such that when they �ood, they
can withstand the ill
effects and support effective evacuations to keep people safe.

like an illustration that we haven’t �gured it out,” Stiftel says.
https://www.publicworks.houstontx.gov/sites/default/files/all_s
wat_projects%20_rev_council_district_web_version.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-
gang/wp/2017/08/27/texas-flood-disaster-harvey-has-unloaded-
9-trillion-tons-of-water/
Many planners contend that impervious surface itself is the
there is, the less absorption takes place and the more runoff has
to be managed.
Reducing development, then, is one of the best ways to manage
urban �
problem is, urban development hasn’t slowed in the last half-
century. Cities have only
become more desirable, spreading outward over the plentiful
land available in the
United States.
offered one attempt at a

compromise. It was meant to protect and indemnify people
without creating economic
catastrophe. Instead of avoiding the �oodplain, insurance
allowed people to build
within it, within management constraints recommended by
FEMA. In theory, �ood-
hazard mitigation hoped to direct development away from
�ood-prone areas through
the disincentives of risk insurance and regulatory complexity.
Since then, attitudes have changed. For one part, initial
avoidance of �oodplains created
desirable targets for development, especially in the middle of
cities. But for another,
Stiftel tells me that attitudes about development in �oodplains
have changed, too. “It’s
more about living with water than it is about discouraging
development in areas prone
to risk.”
Sometimes “living with water” means sidestepping the
consequences. Developers
working in �ood zones might not care what happens after they
at’s
where governmental oversight is supposed to take over. Some
are more strict than

others. After the global �nancial crisis of 2008, for example,
degraded local economies
sometimes spurred relaxed land-use policy in exchange for new
tax bases, particularly
commercial ones.
In other cases, �oodplains have been managed through
redevelopment that reduces
impervious surfaces. Natural ground cover, permeable or semi -
permeable pavers, and
vegetation that supports the movement of water offer examples.
se efforts dovetail
with urban redevelopment efforts that privilege mixed-use and
green space, associated
with both new urbanism and gentri�cation. Recreation lands,
conservation lands and
easements, dry washes, and other approaches attempt to
counterbalance pavement
when possible. Stiftel cites China’s “sponge cities” as a
dramatic example—a
government-funded effort to engineer new, permeable materials
to anticipate and
mitigate the �ooding common to that nation.
* * *

rofessor of city planning at
Georgia Tech who also
wrote a popular textbook on stormwater management, takes
issue with pavement
reduction as a viable cure for urban �ooding. “We focus too
much on impervious
surface and not enough on the conveyance of water,” he tells
me. Even when reduced in
quantity, the water still ends up in in pipes and concrete
channels, speeding fast toward
https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-
network/2016/oct/03/china-government-solve-urban-planning-
flooding-sponge-cities
larger channels. “It’s like taking an aspirin to cure an ailment,”
he scoffs. Houston’s
�ooding demonstrates the impact.
Instead, Debo advocates that urban design mimic rural
hydrology as much as possible.
Reducing impervious surface and improving water conveyance
has a role to play, but

the most important step in sparing cities from �ooding is to
reduce the velocity of water
when it is channelized, so that it doesn’t deluge other sites. And
then to stop moving
water away from buildings and structures entirely, and to start
�nding new uses for it in
place.
ns for processing
and reuse—in some
cases, Debo explains, the result can even save money by
reducing the need to rely on
utility-provided water. Adding vegetation, reclaiming
stormwater, and building local
conveyance systems for delivery of this water offer more
promising solutions.
campus’s local
stormwater management efforts. In one case, the institute took a
soccer �eld and made
it into an in�ltration basin. Water permeates the �eld, where it
is channeled into pipes
and then into local cisterns.
In Houston’s case, catastrophic �oods have been anticipated for

combination of climate change, which produces more intense
and unpredictable
storms, and aggressive development made an event like this
week’s almost inevitable.
national flood risk-
management strategy, and the Houston Chronicle has called
�ood control the city’s
“most pressing infrastructure need.” A lack of funding is often
blamed, and relaxed
FEMA regulations under the Trump Administration won’t help
either.
But for Debo and others, waiting for a holistic, centralized
approach to stormwater
management is a pipe dream anyway. Just as limiting
impervious surface is not the
solution to urban stormwater management, so government-run,
singular infrastructure
might not be either. “It’s much more difficult, and a much
bigger picture,” Debo insists
”
* * *

One problem is that people care about �ooding, because it’s
dramatic and catastrophic.
the real issue lies. Even
if it takes weeks or months, after Harvey subsides, public
interest will decay too. Debo
notes that traffic policy is an easier urban planning problem for
ordinary folk, because it
happens every day.
So does stormwater—it just isn’t treated that way. Instead of
looking for holistic
answers, site-speci�c ones must be pursued instead. Rather than
putting a straight
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/16/texas-
flooding-houston-climate-change-disaster
https://www.texastribune.org/boomtown-floodtown/
https://www.floods.org/ace-
files/documentlibrary/Publications/ASCE_Call_for_National_Fl
ood_Risk_Management_Strategy.pdf
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/texas-officials-drafting-wish-
list-potential-infrastructure-funding-windfall
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/nyregion/trump-
hurricane-sandy-floods.html

channel through a subdivision, for example, Debo suggests
designing one to meander
through it, to decrease the velocity of the water as it exits.
�ooding is reconciling it
with Americans’
insistence that they can and should be able to live, work, and
play anywhere.
Waterborne transit was a key driver of urban development, and
it’s inevitable that cities
have grown where �ooding is prevalent. But there are some
regions that just shouldn’t
become cities. “Parts of Houston in the �oodway, parts of New
Orleans submerged
during Katrina, parts of Florida—these places never should have
been developed in the
�rst place,” Debo concludes. Add sea-level rise and climate-
change superstorms, and
something has to give.
Debo is not optimistic about resisting the urge toward
development. “I don’t think any
of it’s going to happen,” he concedes. “Until we get people in
Congress and in the
White House who care about the environment, it’s just going to

get worse and worse.”
Even so, there’s reason for optimism. If good stormwater
management means good, site-
speci�c design, then ordinary people have a role to play, too.
Residential homeowners
who install a new cement patio or driveway might not even
realize that they are
channeling water down-grade to their neighbors, or
overwhelming a local storm drain.
Citizens can also in�uence stormwater issues within their
municipalities. Many folks
know that they have a local city council and school board, but
local planning, zoning,
and urban design agencies also hold regular public meetings—
unfortunately, most
people only participate in this aspect of local governance when
they have an axe to
grind. For the average American concerned with the deluge, the
best answer is to
replace an occasional, morbid curiosity with �ooding with a
more sophisticated, long-
term interest in stormwater management.

WRD
104
Professor
Rothman
January 15,
2021
Research Project Proposal
The topic for this research paper is about the positive effects of
minors seeking cosmetic surgery through parental consent. The
age of consent for cosmetic surgery is 18. A minor is allowed to
have cosmetic surgery with parental consent, but there is a lot
of controversy around this idea. Examples of a cosmetic surgery
include a tummy tuck, a Rhinoplasty, a breast augmentation, a
face lift, etc. Some parents consent to a nose job or ear pinning
surgery for their children due to bullying or low self esteem.
Many people argue that going under the knife for a reason that
is not life threatening is unnecessary and puts a person’s life at
risk. Other people would rather see their children more
confident and happy with the way they look rather than have
them wait until they are older. I want to research about the
benefits of minors receiving cosmetic surgeries and the reasons
why they choose to have it done in the first place. I want to
research the studies that were done about the minors who
received drastic cosmetic surgeries and what places in the world
have the highest rates of underage cosmetic operations. In all
parts of the world, there are different beauty standards that are
increasing the number of surgeries being performed. Younger
generations are now considering changing the way they look in
more dramatic ways. My main question is to find out why
parents are open to allowing their children to change their
physical appearance. Is it worth it for a child to go under the
knife to better “fit” the beauty standards of society? Is the
younger generation more self conscious? What does having
cosmetic surgery at a young age teach them? The main goal is to
learn and research the pros and cons for cosmetic surgery. I
want to know who the youngest person was to receive cosmetic

surgery and what the surgery was. I would like my audience to
have a better understanding of why parents go through with
signing consent for their underage children to have cosmetic
operations. There are also videos about parents explaining some
of these reasons. One mother allowed her underage daughter to
receive lip fillers. It was simply for the reason of “beautifying”
herself. Majority of parents that I have already read about
signed consent for their underage kids to receive nose jobs.
Many of these reasons were for self esteem boosts and are all
related to confidence issues. These confidence issues tend to
stem from the media. I believe this topic is urgent for audiences
to consider because it is a growing business throughout the
country and world. It’s important to bring more awareness to
the negative effects of society's beauty standard. These
standards are now affecting younger and younger people. I feel
like this is going to be a growing problem as we continue to
judge and base beauty solely on looks and physical features. I
think it is important to determine whether patients receive
surgery to satisfy their own interest or to meet the expectations
of someone else. Cosmetic surgeries may reduce psychological
burdens in minors undergoing operations. The main focus for
this whole research paper is the positive outcomes that this age
group experiences thanks to having cosmetic surgeries.
Additionally, for all surgeries, an appropriate consent form is
required. A surgeon will have to educate both the minor and the
parent about the risks, benefits, and the potential complications
associated with a procedure. Both parties understand each of
these things and what they entail. I want to research about
cosmetic treatments that teenage girls and boys have for
childhood obesity, such as Striae treatments. These are laser
treatments that minimise the appearance of striae that have
developed around shoulders, hips, and abdomen after losing a
considerable amount of weight. This is just one example of a
cosmetic procedure that is non-invasive and has a positive
therapeutic outcome. I will focus on both genders in this
research as well. I will discuss the importance of maturity in

minors for the decision of cosmetic operations.
Rothman
RESEARCH PROJECT/ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY PROMPT
Act 1
This essay will use various rhetorical strategies to argue for a
specific course of action. It will be at
least 7-8 pages long. Your Research Project will build upon
your proposal, annotated bibliography,
and discourse essay. As you write it, parts of your earlier
writings may be useful. You may change
your mind about something, and you may change the words on
the page. But some of your ideas
and language from earlier writings will likely play an important
role in your Research
Project/Argumentative Essay.
In the Argumentative Essay, you are expected to go beyond
merely stating three or so reasons why
your position is a good idea. In this essay, you are expected to
argue so that you thoroughly persuade

your reader to think and act further about the issues at hand.
This means that you will need to
thoroughly address any real or possible objections a reader
might have to your stance. This project
should include at least eight (8) sources, and you should use
APA in-text citations and include a
References page.
Act II
As we discussed at the start of the quarter, your project MUST
engage something about which you
are passionate, something you care about, something you
believe is urgent for other to care about as
well. Try to demonstrate this in your essay.
The work you have done up until now has been substantial:
imagining a conversation you feel
strongly about entering and contributing to, proposing it,
researching, annotating some of your
research sources, more researching, putting much of your
research into context (discourse essay),
and more researching. We’ve now discussed several major
rhetorical concerns: purpose, audience,

some ideas about invention or how you might craft your
research and ideas, some ideas about
arrangement (how you can begin thinking about productive
structure), and a good bit about style
(language, tone, sentence and paragraph substance). In addition
to engaging the CONTENT of your
project’s focus, you must also heavily engage and strategize
about HOW you write everything in this
essay. I imagine this is quite a different challenge than what
you’re used to in writing courses.
Please put your all into thoughtfully building your essay. Please
do think of yourself as a builder, a
creator, someone who has the purpose and freedom to make a
piece of writing that will truly impact
its audience.
Epilogue
Please complete and submit on D2L a *full draft*, 7-8 pages,
double-spaced, incorporating at least
eight sources, with References page, and using APA formatting,
by Friday 2/19, 11:59pm CST.
Your revised, “finished” essay will be submitted with the rest of
your Course Portfolio on Friday

3/19, during Final Exams week. So, don’t stress about that for
now. Focus on writing a strong, full
essay.
12/23/2020 Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat
Islands? - Yale E360
https://e360.yale.edu/features/can-we-turn-down-the-
temperature-on-urban-heat-islands 1/6
T
Yale Environment 360
Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands?
Using citizen science volunteers, researchers are more
accurately measuring temperature differences between
city hot spots and their cooler surroundings. With heat waves
intensifying , the results are now being used to
develop a range of innovative urban planning strategies.
BY JIM MORRISON • SEPTEMBER 12 , 2019
he volunteers fanned out across cities from Boston to Honolulu
this summer, with
inexpensive thermal monitors resembling tiny periscopes
attached to their vehicles to
collect data on street-level temperatures. Signs on their cars

announcing “Science Project in
Progress” explained their plodding pace — no more than 30
miles-per-hour to capture the dramatic
temperature differences from tree-shaded parks to sun-baked
parking lots to skyscraper-dominated
downtowns.
�e work of these citizen scientists is part of a new way of
studying the urban heat island effect, with
volunteers mapping two dozen cities worldwide in recent years.
Past studies of urban heat islands — in
which metropolitan areas experience significantly higher
temperatures than their surroundings — have
relied on satellite data that measures the temperature reflected
off rooftops and streets. But Vivek
Shandas, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland
State University in Oregon and a
researcher leading the project, says the urban heat island effect
is more complicated and subtler than
satellite data indicates.
“�ere’s much more nuance within the city,” Shandas says.
“What we’re finding is that there’s upwards
of 15- to 20-degree Fahrenheit differences within a city. In fact,
a city could have the same temperature

reading in one area as its rural or forested counterpart.”
On-the-ground data clearly demonstrate a correlation between
lower-income neighborhoods and higher temperatures.
A Chicago resident struggles with triple-digit temperatures
during a heat wave in 2012. AP PHOTO/M. SPENCER GREEN
https://e360.yale.edu/
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center -
center_80/AP_120706121098_ChicagoHeat2012_web.jpg
https://e360.yale.edu/authors/jim-morrison
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/citizen-science-
salon/2019/08/09/wicked-hot-boston-urban-heat-island-uhi-
mapping/#.XXZOFGandAx
https://www.weathernationtv.com/news/citizen-scientists-take-
to-the-streets-to-map-the-hottest-places-in-ten-u-s-cities/
ALSO ON YALE E360
From high above, a new way of seeing our
urban planet. Read more.
By understanding in detail where hot spots are located, cities
can address extreme heat neighborhood-
by-neighborhood, choosing from a variety of strategies that
include removing or whitewashing black

asphalt or roof surfaces, adding more trees for shade, requiring
developers to vary the heights of new
buildings to increase airflow, and opening more public air -
conditioned spaces.
Using Shandas’ research, Portland, the first city Shandas and
his team surveyed, has proposed zoning
code amendments and strategies targeting urban heat, including
limiting paved neighborhood
parking areas and increasing space for trees. In addition, city
officials said that Shandas’ on-the-ground
data clearly demonstrated a correlation between lower-income
neighborhoods and higher
temperatures. Shandas’ work also showed that the places where
lower-income people often work, such
as the industrial areas along Portland’s rivers, also experience
higher-than-average temperatures, the
officials said.
Other urban heat island studies have shown that the hottest
places in metropolitan areas are often in
poor, minority neighborhoods with few trees, and this research
can provide a framework for city
planners to address the problem.
Shandas and his teams have mapped 24 cities in

the United States and worldwide, including
Albuquerque; parts of the Vancouver
metropolitan area; Hong Kong; Doha, Qatar; and
Hermosillo, Mexico. In the past, urban heat
island studies relied on data from satellites or
stationary sensors, but Shandas’ appears to be
the first enlisting citizen scientists to collect
temperature data using mobile sensors.
Researchers have studied urban heat island
effects in every major country from Australia,
where a government study warned that heat
wave deaths would quadruple by 2050, to China,
which has more than 40 cities with populations
exceeding 2 million people. Globally, heat is the
number one weather-related killer, causing more
deaths each year than floods, tornadoes, or hurricanes. Extreme
heat can kill directly via heat stroke
and indirectly through increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
Climate models show that in some

cities the number of high-heat days could double by 2040.
�is summer’s heat wave in Europe, with temperatures soaring
to a record-breaking 46 degrees Celsius
(115 degrees F) in the south of France, killed 1,500 people in
France alone, the French health minister
said this week. Russian officials reported that a 2010 heat wave
killed 11,000 people in Moscow. �e rise
in overall global temperature makes extreme heat events,
including consecutive days of high heat,
more likely. Mitigating extreme heat, one recent study says,
would save lives.
Urban heat islands have been generally understood since large
cities began to emerge
in the 19th century, but research by Shandas and others reveals
a complicated
patchwork of hot spots and cool spots that change during the
course of a day and are
determined by urban design. Satellite data, for instance, showed
midtown Manhattan
to be an afternoon hot spot. But mapping unveiled a different
picture.
“When you actually go down to the ground, where people are
walking and life is

happening, it turns out it’s not the same signal,” Shandas says.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to adapt the landscape to respond to
the increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves,” says one
Researcher Vivek Shandas has mapped street-level temperatures
in 24 cities worldwide.
COURTESY OF PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-
center_80/VivekShadas_web.jpg
https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-high-above-a-new-way-of-
seeing-our-urban-planet
https://e360.yale.edu/features/urban-heat-can-white-roofs-help-
cool-the-worlds-warming-cities
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670716
30066X
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5923682/
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/645259
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/5/282/htm
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/ files/2014-
07/documents/epa_how_to_measure_a_uhi.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212095518
300555
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/heatwave-
deaths-to-quadruple-government-report-finds-20130730-
2qxef.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09628-w
https://www.weather.gov/hazstat/
https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/climatechang
e/health_impacts/cardiovascular_diseases/index.cfm
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-
change-and-health

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ab27cf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/summer-
heatwaves-in-france-killed-1500-says-health-minister
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-18/russian-heatwave-
killed-11000-people/2265184
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/extreme-heat-climate-
change-19641
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaau4373
expert.
�e long shadows of Manhattan skyscrapers, for example, can
make parts of that borough cooler in
summer than some neighborhoods in Queens, which generally
has low-rise buildings. On the other
hand, midtown Manhattan retains heat and starts the day much
warmer because the heat that’s
absorbed by buildings, roofs, streets, and sidewalks during the
day doesn’t dissipate as well at night.
“It’s the built environment that we’re really trying to
understand because, ultimately, we’re trying to
adapt the landscape to respond to this increasing frequency,
intensity, and duration of heat wave,”

Shandas says. “We’re trying to get more precise data. And there
were so many surprises.” A large
expanse of water, for instance, or grass that is not watered, can
be almost as hot as concrete, he says.
Jaime Madrigano, a researcher with the RAND Corporation who
has studied urban heat, praised the
way Shandas and his colleagues were using citizen science
volunteers and “getting the community
engaged in the issues around extreme heat… I think there are a
lot of cities that are trying to make
these changes. �is kind of data is really important to doing
that.”
Shandas grew up in Bangalore, and during visits there and to
other cities in India he began thinking
about how cities have developed without regard for the
increasing incidence of extreme weather
events linked to climate change, including heat waves. He began
his research with a bit of engineering,
using a National Science Foundation grant to reach out to
engineers who helped create the hand-made
instrumentation that transmits data. With funding from the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, he first mapped Portland in 2015.
A breakfast in Portland the next year with Jeremy

Hoffman, who had just accepted a job as the
climate and earth scientist at the Science
Museum of Virginia, led to a partnership and
citizen-science projects mapping Richmond,
Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
�ose partnerships with local groups have been
invaluable, says Hoffman. “It was really useful to
have the local perspective” while creating the
mapping routes, Hoffman says. “Where is the
park that everybody goes to? Where are they
going to redevelop over the next couple of years?
�at kind of knowledge made our campaigns not
only scientifically useful, but publicly attractive.
It was the people themselves getting involved; it
wasn’t just the scientists.”
�e studies correlated data to the tenth of a
degree from sensors on vehicles that followed a
series of one-hour, zigzag routes — early morning,

mid-afternoon, and early evening — driven by
volunteers recruited by local science museums, universities, and
non-profits. Fifteen teams mapped
Richmond during a summer weekend in 2017. One park along
the James River measured 87 degrees F,
while a few miles away, along a four-lane roadway, it was 103
degrees.
Shandas and Hoffman say their work demonstrates that extreme
heat is a social justice issue. In
Richmond’s hottest areas, they found a higher concentration of
poverty and of 911 calls for heat-related
illnesses. Mapping last year in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore
found a similar correlation, with
higher temperatures in lower-income neighborhoods largely
barren of trees and lower temperatures in
more affluent, tree-shaded areas. Shandas and Hoffman recently
completed a paper, due to be
published soon, comparing redlined neighborhoods — those
once illegally designated by lenders as
A mobile sensor collects temperature data in suburban
Sacramento this summer. COURTESY OF
VIVEK SHANDAS

center_80/ElkGrove1_web2.jpg
https://toolkit.climate.gov/case-studies/where-do-we-need-
shade-mapping-urban-heat-islands-richmond-virginia
too risky to make home loans — with extreme urban
temperatures. “�e big take-home point for the
paper is that 92 percent of the cities that were redlined are now
warmer than their A-rated neighbors,”
Hoffman says. “�is seems like it’s predominantly due to a lack
of green and a dominance of gray.”
Shandas says the research has uncovered six things that affect
urban heat. �ree are living — the
volume of the tree canopy, the height of the tree canopy, and
the ground level vegetation. �ree are
human-built — the volume of buildings, the difference in
building heights, and the coloring of the
buildings.
The differences in morning and afternoon temperatures in
Richmond, Virginia. COURTESY OF JEREMY HOFFMAN

Poverty levels in Richmond. Lower-income neighborhoods often
experience the worst heat in the city. COURTESY OF JEREMY
HOFFMAN
center_80/Urban-heat_Richmond_web.jpg
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-
center_80/poverty_Richmond_web.jpg
ALSO ON YALE E360
Energy Equity: Bringing solar power to low-
income communities. Read more.
�ere were some surprises, he says. �e volume of buildings can
have both a negative and positive
effect. Tall buildings that cast shade lower relative afternoon
temperatures, while a large volume of
shorter buildings, like the big-box stores in suburban areas, help
generate hotter afternoon
temperatures. Ground-level vegetation doesn’t necessarily
reduce temperature — it’s not that much

cooler than asphalt — unless it’s watered. Shandas also has
found that increasing the difference in
building heights in an area creates more air circulation, which
has a cooling effect.
Creating cooler cities doesn’t necessarily mean building at
lower densities. What matters, he says, is
varying building heights, the canopy cover, and street widths.
“It wasn’t about no buildings and all
green,” he says. “It was about designing our spaces more
thoughtfully.”
Some cities are already using the detailed research to guide
decisions. In Richmond, a heat map and a
vulnerability map showing those more at risk appear in reports
for housing, transportation, and the
climate action plan, and the city’s comprehensive master plan
calls for reducing urban heat.
Richmond hasn’t invested in planting trees yet, he adds, but
citizen-science groups like Groundwork
RVA and the museum have developed programs such as
�rowing Shade in RVA, a program teaching
students about urban heat that has led to them planting peach
trees at local high schools and
designing shady structures for neighborhood bus stops.
Some of the deadliest heat waves in recent decades have taken

place in northern cities, where people are not accustomed to
extreme heat.
Groundwork RVA’s parent organization, Groundwork USA, has
funding to expand on this work for a
Climate Safe Neighborhoods project exploring the relationship
between historical race-based housing
segregation and the impacts of climate change in Denver,
Colorado; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Richmond,
California; and Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Even at higher latitudes, heat is an issue. According to the
Centers for Disease Control, some of the
deadliest heat waves in recent decades have taken place in
northern cities like Chicago, where people
are not accustomed to extreme heat and more residences lack air
conditioning. A five-day heat wave in
Chicago in 1995 led to the deaths of 739 people.
In Portland, Shandas has created heat maps containing
demographic information including age, race,
education, poverty level, and education. �e city is focusing its
efforts in areas where urban heat
islands and indicators of vulnerability, including low -income
levels, overlap. Shandas’ work is reflected
in Portland’s Better Housing by Design zoning update, in which

the city has proposed zoning
amendments to reduce urban heat island effects, including
limiting surface parking areas in
residential neighborhoods and requiring landscaped setbacks
between buildings and streets to
provide more space for trees.
His next step is to expand heat island mapping to 50 cities in
2020. �e key question,
he says, is whether cities will begin making the changes
necessary to decrease deaths
from extreme heat.
“�ose are very preventable deaths,” Shandas says. “We can
identify those locations
and ameliorate some of the effects. It ultimately comes down to
how to help these
people. We have the technology.
Jim Morrison writes about the environment, travel, the arts, and
business. His stories have appeared in Smithsonian, �e New
York
Times, �e Wall Street Journal, National Wildlife, Pacific
Standard, �e Washington Post, and numerous other
publications. He lives
in Norfolk, Virginia. MORE →
https://e360.yale.edu/features/energy-equity-bringing-solar-
power-to-low-income-communities

https://www.groundworkrva.org/
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/02/richmond-
teens-design-shade-projects/
https://groundworkusa.org/
https://groundworkusa.org/climate-safe-neighborhoods/about/
https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/pubs/extreme-heat-
guidebook.pdf
http://www.capainsights.com/social-vulnerability
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/683878

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