Long before anyone worried about climate change, Parisian street cleaners doused the city's pavements with water every morning, a practice dating back to the late nineteenth century that was originally meant to keep dust down rather than cool anyone off. That habit faded through the twentieth century as cleaning methods changed, and the practice became a historical curiosity. The deadly heatwave that swept across Europe in August 2003, causing tens of thousands of excess deaths across the continent and hitting the Paris region particularly hard, led city planners to rethink almost every tool in their toolbox to keep residents safe during extreme heat, including tools that had quietly fallen out of favour.
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