Building cool parks to beat the urban, heat-island effect

By Rupsa Roy, Julie Eaton Ernst, and Indrani Ghosh 

Parks and open space function as critical infrastructure for public health as well as for mitigating and adapting to climate change. This is especially evident in island environments, where there is limited vegetation, paved surfaces, and dense development. These compounding factors result in higher temperatures when compared to those in rural surroundings—a phenomenon known as the “urban heat-island” (UHI) effect—along with increased stormwater-runoff volumes, velocities, and pollutants that exacerbate urban flood events.