Cleaner city design can cool Barcelona by up to 1.75°C, but new white roofs and parks still cannot offset the more than 6°C warming scientists project by 2100, leaving heat risk high in the neighborhoods that need help most

American cities are getting hotter every summer, and people are dying because of it. According to a 2024 study, ‘Trends of Heat-Related Deaths in the US, 1999-2023,’ published in JAMA, by Howard et al. , heat-related deaths in the US rose from 1,069 in 1999 to 2,325 in 2023, a 117% increase in raw numbers over that period. The average number of heat waves that major US cities experience each year has doubled since the 1980s, according to ABC News citing the federal government's Fifth National Climate Assessment. Cities built on concrete and asphalt were not designed for what is coming. Now, scientists are testing whether the proposed fixes can actually keep people safe.

A new study titled ‘Adapting urban areas to rising temperatures: Strategies to reduce heat and vulnerability in a warming world,’ published in the journal Urban Climate, led by researchers at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), put three of the most discussed urban cooling strategies through rigorous climate simulations to find out. The findings are sobering, practical, and broadly relevant to every American city suffering from ever-hotter summers.