New Publication: “From heat racism and heat gentrification to urban heat justice in the USA and Europe”

A new article published in Nature Cities examines urban heat issues through new lenses of inequality, calling for researchers to bridge the gap between heat management and institutional discrimination. Focusing on the Global North, the authors, including IOC Director Loretta Lees and External Advisory Board Member Isabelle Anguelovski, argue that researchers and planners must consider historic and repeated patterns of heat racism and heat gentrification for heat-abatement strategies. They explore equity-centered policies and open an interdisciplinary dialogue on tackling the unequal effects of urban heat.

Abstract:

“Heat has gained traction as a visible amplifier of unequal vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Here we call for urban climate researchers researching in North America and Europe to distill the relations between unequal heat effects and the legacy of exclusionary urban planning, to point out how injustice is (re)produced through heat-response measures and heat gentrification, and propose new research priorities and policy takeaways grounded in heat justice. We argue that heat-abatement strategies cannot be climate-justice-driven if they prioritize heat management as an apolitical heat response strategy that does not address concurrent patterns of heat racism and emerging heat gentrification.”