Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective

A growing literature documents the effects of heat stress on premature mortality and other adverse health outcomes. Urban heat islands (UHI) can exacerbate these adverse impacts in cities by amplifying heat exposure during the day and inhibiting the body’s ability to recover at night. Since the UHI...

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Main Authors: T Chakraborty, A Hsu, D Manya, G Sheriff
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2019-01-01
Series:Environmental Research Letters
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3b99
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author T Chakraborty
A Hsu
D Manya
G Sheriff
author_facet T Chakraborty
A Hsu
D Manya
G Sheriff
author_sort T Chakraborty
collection DOAJ
description A growing literature documents the effects of heat stress on premature mortality and other adverse health outcomes. Urban heat islands (UHI) can exacerbate these adverse impacts in cities by amplifying heat exposure during the day and inhibiting the body’s ability to recover at night. Since the UHI intensity varies not only across, but also within cities, intra-city variation may lead to differential impact of urban heat stress on different demographic groups. To examine these differential impacts, we combine satellite observations with census data to evaluate the relationship between distributions of both UHI and income at the neighborhood scale for 25 cities around the world. We find that in most (72%) cases, poorer neighborhoods experience elevated heat exposure, an incidental consequence of the intra-city distribution of income in cities. This finding suggests that policymakers should consider designing city-specific UHI reduction strategies to mitigate its impacts on the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations who may be less equipped to adapt to environmental stressors. Since the strongest contributor of intra-urban UHI variability among the physical characteristics considered in this study is a neighborhood’s vegetation density, increasing green space in lower income neighborhoods is one strategy urban policymakers can adopt to ameliorate some of UHI’s inequitable burden on economically disadvantaged residents.
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spelling doaj.art-0cd57b3e74434ccdb8a17e534fd9454c2023-08-09T14:46:21ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262019-01-01141010500310.1088/1748-9326/ab3b99Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspectiveT Chakraborty0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1338-3525A Hsu1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4913-9479D Manya2G Sheriff3Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT, United States of AmericaYale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT, United States of America; Yale-NUS College, SingaporeYale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT, United States of AmericaSchool of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ, United States of AmericaA growing literature documents the effects of heat stress on premature mortality and other adverse health outcomes. Urban heat islands (UHI) can exacerbate these adverse impacts in cities by amplifying heat exposure during the day and inhibiting the body’s ability to recover at night. Since the UHI intensity varies not only across, but also within cities, intra-city variation may lead to differential impact of urban heat stress on different demographic groups. To examine these differential impacts, we combine satellite observations with census data to evaluate the relationship between distributions of both UHI and income at the neighborhood scale for 25 cities around the world. We find that in most (72%) cases, poorer neighborhoods experience elevated heat exposure, an incidental consequence of the intra-city distribution of income in cities. This finding suggests that policymakers should consider designing city-specific UHI reduction strategies to mitigate its impacts on the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations who may be less equipped to adapt to environmental stressors. Since the strongest contributor of intra-urban UHI variability among the physical characteristics considered in this study is a neighborhood’s vegetation density, increasing green space in lower income neighborhoods is one strategy urban policymakers can adopt to ameliorate some of UHI’s inequitable burden on economically disadvantaged residents.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3b99urban heat island effectmulti-city comparisoninequalitydistributional equalityremote sensingurban sustainability
spellingShingle T Chakraborty
A Hsu
D Manya
G Sheriff
Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective
Environmental Research Letters
urban heat island effect
multi-city comparison
inequality
distributional equality
remote sensing
urban sustainability
title Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective
title_full Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective
title_fullStr Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective
title_full_unstemmed Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective
title_short Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective
title_sort disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower income neighborhoods a multi city perspective
topic urban heat island effect
multi-city comparison
inequality
distributional equality
remote sensing
urban sustainability
url https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3b99
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