Social dimensions of urban heat island mitigation using community gardens
Date
2017
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Urban Heat Islands (UHI) occur where urban areas have higher temperatures than their less-developed surroundings, and can be mitigated in part by urban vegetation. In addition, the experience of the UHI varies across populations within a city due to many social and economic factors such as poverty, age, and the residents’ biological sex. Urban community gardens have been suggested as a form of urban vegetation which may mitigate local temperature increases associated with the urban heat island in a city as well as providing many other social benefits. However, urban greenspace such as parks vary in cooling capability, and urban gardens are also subject to social forces that influence their composition and may affect their cooling capability. Through an analysis of observed and modelled data from a garden in Philadelphia, the effects of urban garden composition on a neighborhood’s thermal comfort was analyzed. It has been demonstrated that urban gardens can reduce temperatures within a city as well as promote thermal comfort, primarily due to the presence of tree cover. The experienced cooling effect of trees varies between the sexes, with females seeing a greater reduction in thermal discomfort than males. However, while urban gardens (and tree cover) may promote thermal comfort, there are many obstacles to cooling the city in this manner. Many of the most popular Philadelphia urban garden crops are non-arboreal. Increasing the cooling impact of an urban garden may require changing garden composition to promote cooling, and trees take years to mature. In addition, residents also face structural inequality and the risk of gentrification when attempting to maintain urban gardens or increase tree cover in their neighborhoods.
Description
Keywords
Social sciences, Greenspace, Heat mitigation, Inequality, Thermal comfort, Urban garden, Urban heat island