More Cities Address ‘Shade Deserts’ as Extreme Heat Triggers Health Issues

Neighborhoods with more trees and green space stay cooler, while those coated with layers of asphalt swelter. Lower-income neighborhoods tend to be hottest, a city report found, and they have the least tree canopy.

The same is true in cities across the country, where poor and minority neighborhoods disproportionately suffer the consequences of rising temperatures. Research shows the temperatures in a single city, from Portland, Oregon, to Baltimore, can vary by up to 20 degrees. For a resident in a leafy suburb, a steamy summer day may feel uncomfortable. But for their friend a few neighborhoods over, it’s more than uncomfortable — it’s dangerous.

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

I don’t understand why city planners love barren plains of asphalt. Throw some greenery in there. Parking lots are so depressing.

mojofrododojo,

Every parking lot in the world should be covered in solar for charging. Break it up with large trees too.

They’re already ugly. Make them useful.

CaptainAniki,

We should be making them irrelevant. fuckcars

mojofrododojo,

unfortunately there are lots of places where you can’t run light rail and busses efficiently - places like montana or utah, the population isn’t dense enough. certainly agree wherever possible tho, tired of living in this autotopia shithole

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Trees are a good thing? Who knew?

SymphonicResonance,
@SymphonicResonance@lemmy.world avatar

If you live some place in a drought, water is an issue when planting new trees.

demlet, (edited )

Not like they’ve been part of the ecosystem for billions hundreds of millions of years or anything.

TitanLaGrange,

More like 375 million years, about the middle Devonian period.

Tangentally: for millions of years after plants started using lignin as a structural material the decomposers couldn’t break it down very effectively, so for like 60 million years lots of that tough plant material stacked up into deep layers and eventually turned into coal.

PsychedSy,

Subscribe.

schroedingershat,

But car drivers crash into them and hurt themselves sometimes or birds perch and poop on cars. Not worth having trees /s

dylanmorgan,

Here’s a study from 2019 quantifying the superiority of trees over artificial shade structures: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S1618866718304291

Tl;dr is that tree shade is 2-5° C cooler than artificial shade. Time to start lobbying city councils to plant trees all over and ideally include fruit trees for some urban edible forest action.

schroedingershat,

Wouldn’t it depend on the artificial structure and how much water you are adding?

Like a piece of foam painted with pure white IR-emissive CaCO2 is going to be >10 degrees cooler than a black panel with an air gap and glass.

There are likely tradeoffs (water and cost for the tree being the main downside).

Personally I think both is good pv-magazine.com/…/sunagri-reveals-agrivoltaics-pe…

Less water, more elecricity and cooler temps than either alone.

Son_of_dad,

I live in a nice, heavily treed neighborhood. I always dress wrong, cause it gets so much hotter once I get into the city and open areas.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

One of the biggest shocks moving from the midwest to Los Angeles wasn’t the palm trees, it was that there were so few shade trees.

Sure, there were some shady neighborhoods, and there was the very shady Griffith park, but overall, almost no shade. It was nuts.

postmateDumbass,

Gotta make life tough on those homeless.people. /s

MataVatnik,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

I was rock climbing yesterday on a rockface getting pounded by the sun on a 90° day the entire day I felt sick, tired, and drank a shitton of water and it was not enough. People should value the shade.

Know_not_Scotty_does,

Gotta keep your electrolytes up too. I learned that one the hard way. You don’t need to do that in an office, you do when its 110 degrees in the shade and doing physical activities.

atx_aquarian,
@atx_aquarian@lemmy.world avatar

Build covers with solar panels on their roofs. Provide shade and generate money in the long run. Most brick-and-mortar shoppers would be more attracted to covered parking, too.

It blows my mind that an article about shade deserts doesn’t mention covering with solar collection systems. We all should expect anything intended to take sunlight should be a photovoltaic surface.

Toast,

An increase in the number of solar cells in an area can be useful, but shade cover from trees would have a greater cooling effect on most areas. Trees both shade and provide transpiration cooling. The water evaporating from leaves cools the surrounding air as the water goes from a liquid to gas phase.

SkyeStarfall, (edited )

And just like solar panels, trees harvest a part of the energy in sunlight, giving additional cooling to just a shade. And trees are cheaper to set up, even if they may not provide a return on electricity.

Ideally you would have trees on the ground and solar panels on the roofs, to further increase cooling.

LibertyLizard,
@LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net avatar

Not a bad idea per se but it’s a very expensive solution. We probably won’t be able build enough panels for all of the shade we’ll need for future heat.

Trees are usually the best and easiest solution in most areas, but many municipalities including Tampa don’t take them very seriously. They need space for roots if they’re to provide adequate shade in urban areas.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

Trees should be the first priority, with solar cell shade a distant second. Trees only need water and minor maintenance, are far cooler to be under than a simple shade barrier, provide a lot of benefits like wind breaking and homes for nature to live in that are better for people than artificial structures.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

Most brick-and-mortar shoppers

This whole article is about residential areas, not commercial / retail ones.

We all should expect anything intended to take sunlight should be a photovoltaic surface.

How do you manage that in neighborhood with preexisting homes?

PunnyName,

Panels can be added.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

To what? Homes? Sure, but who is paying for it? Otherwise what do you suggest, erecting covered parking spots over the tops of people’s yards or driveways?

PunnyName,

You can get subsidies to add on. And after they’re installed, they save on energy costs, eventually paying for themselves.

Also, yes to driveways.

postmateDumbass,

Carports have been a thing since they were called something else when used by horse and buggy.

atx_aquarian, (edited )
@atx_aquarian@lemmy.world avatar

My wording was hasty. I only envision that new structures should be expected to come with solar tiles or panels. Like, you spent half a mil on a new house, do an extra 10-20k to have a useful roof instead of a ridiculous summer passive heater.

And yes, you’re right, trees should be #1, and the main point of the article was really the disappearance of green spaces and coverage. This brief spot is what was on my mind in my take on it:

Quicker actions could include erecting better shade structures at bus stops or implementing rules for construction to encourage the use of materials that generate less heat in the sun. For example, some cities in the Northeast — including Philadelphia and New York — provide financial incentives for “green roofs,” in which the top of a building is covered with plants.

So I guess I had an “old man yells at clouds” moment.

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

Solar panels are significant infrastructure investments. Because you don’t just need the panels. You need wiring (possibly cooling) to connect them up and, generally, some form of a bigass battery to store the excess power (or the considerably more complex infrastructure to feed that back into the grid).

We SHOULD be working toward this with basically any decent sized office building having panels and storage. But, short term, we need awnings and trees. Trees especially as they do a LOT more than just provide shade.

As for residential homes? Solar panels are expensive and the batteries are too. But, if people can afford it, it is something to consider.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

It would cost about $30,000 for us to do solar cells and battery. That’s more than my car cost.

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

It helps that solar panels (done well) very much add to the value of the house and there are a lot of state and federal programs to offset the costs. And, if you live in an even somewhat sunny area, they help to offset their own cost over a LONG time.

But yeah. Regardless of what the tech youtubers with giant mansions say, they are not some magic panacea. And I very much align with Technology Connections in terms of being wary of their impact on society as a whole when the rich can pay even less of an energy bill.

But, if you can afford them and they make sense, they are awesome.

schroedingershat,

You can buy the panels, inverter, racking and a battery which produces more than enough for anything smaller than a mansion for <$10k. Batteries are also not really necessary and can be added later.

Why are you paying > $20k for someone to put in 60 screws and a piece of conduit?

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

For one thing, that’s not what I’ve seen in terms of pricing overall. For another, believe it or not, not all of us are able to do things like install solar panels on a roof.

schroedingershat,

Wild concept: It’s possible to offer a fair price to someone who can. You don’t need to pay $20k for one day’s labour (although you probably do need to pay about $1k for an hour for a licensed electrician to inspect and do the final hookup if you want to AC feed for winter and cloudy days). You do not need to pay $1/W or wait years for grid tie if you have a battery and size for self consumption.

Given how thoroughly ripped off you are and how dismissive you are of the price people in civilised countries consider normal, I’ll assume you’re in the US. Signature solar sell panels for 31c/W hybrid off-grid inverters for $2k and batteries for $280/kWh. You can probably do better if you look around and don’t just listen to the door to door MLM scammers.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Again, the prices you are giving me are not the prices I have been seeing.

And I wasn’t dismissive of anything. I was talking about my personal experience. Which you are dismissing.

And even if you’re right, I can’t afford $10,000 either.

schroedingershat,

You’re just spreading propaganda.

If you don’t personally want a thing then just shut up rather than polluting a discussion about a completely different use case.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Now you’re really being dismissive. Ironic.

schroedingershat,

It’s always correct to dismiss concern trolls.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

So it’s bad for me to be dismissive but good for you to be dismissive. Fascinating double standard.

And I still don’t have the money to spend whether it’s $10,000 or $20,000. You clearly do. Enjoy your privilege of not being the over half of the people in the U.S. living paycheck-to-paycheck.

schroedingershat,

Yup. Definite concern troll behavior.

Pretending the worst prices in the most expensive place in the world for solar are normal. Then pulling the hostage shield politics card in a thread about public spending. Now crying victim.

Completely standard conservative reactionary behavior.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

What are you even talking about now? They weren’t the worst prices. The worst prices were like $50,000. It’s almost like you don’t know what I saw, isn’t it? But you’re clearly the Flying Squid expert here.

And again, enjoy your privilege. Must be nice to be rich.

schroedingershat,

Pv is now around $30/m^2 wholesale and $60/m^2 retail.

Not much more expensive than a sheet metal roof (far cheaper than a mature tree after all the water and tending), but a sheet metal roof doesn’t produce $100/yr worth of electricity.

Tree good. If can’t afford tree, then pv obvious choice.

tallwookie,
@tallwookie@lemmy.world avatar

solar panels are usually not that efficient when they’re too warm though

Cheers,

I really hope Biden pushes something next term that allows promotes solar like the current ev push.

Even better, ban HoAs from banning solar. Fuck that noise.

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