Hot time: summer in the city

By The Big Story

In today’s Big Story podcast, large metropolises tend to be especially adept at soaking up heat and trapping it. This means that as the world gets hotter, cities — even historically temperate ones like Toronto — need to get serious about protecting their most vulnerable residents from heat related illness or death.

One of the biggest issues is that extreme heat does not impact all city residents equally. People living in lower income neighbourhoods, for example, are less likely to have access to air-conditioning, or shaded areas under tree cover.

Today’s guest is Toronto-based journalist and associate editor for The Local, Inori Roy. According to her, any solutions for protecting residents from future heat waves, needs to address inequities within urban areas.

“More broadly, we need to be thinking about resilient architecture and building design that creates passive cooling,” she said.

So what options currently exist for vulnerable residents to beat the heat? How are they falling short? And why can’t we just air-condition our way out of this?

You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify.

You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

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