From heat racism and heat gentrification to urban heat justice in the USA and Europe

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. Proposing pathways to what they call urban heat justice, Anguelovski et al. argue that heat adaptation strategies must account for historic drivers of environmental injustice, including historically exclusionary urban planning practices, particularly around housing, and new manifestations of environmental injustice such as heat gentrification.