Culture
The Best Ways to Throw Shade
Just in time for summer: three smart ways cities, and the people who live in them, deflect the sun’s rays.
On really hot afternoons in crowded cities, the pavement seems to sweat and sizzle. As the sun beats down on tarry roads, the asphalt sometimes feels like it’s singeing your shoes and licking at your ankles.
Chalk that up, in part, to the urban heat island effect. Dense cities, packed with steel, cement, and glass, retain more heat than rural areas. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that cities with more than 1 million residents can have an annual mean air temperature nearly six degrees warmer than surrounding areas. On a given evening, that difference can be as much as 22 degrees.