Rising temperatures and more frequent heat waves due to climate change are making many Mediterranean cities dangerous places in the summer, especially for vulnerable populations. “We don’t focus enough on how extreme temperatures affect urban environments,” said Eleni Myrivili, who spent years studying the issue in her hometown of Athens, one of the cities hardest hit by rising temperatures. In 2014 she was elected Deputy Mayor for Urban Nature and Climate Adaptation in the Greek capital and after a stay at Harvard University to study the resilience of cities to high temperatures, she returned to Greece to become the first European city heat conductor. Her work in this area has earned her the appointment of World Director for Heat [chief heat officer] at UN Habitat. His country, Greece, is experiencing the worst heatwave on record.
Questions. What is a heat boss for?
Answer. To protect the most vulnerable people – so fewer people die from high temperatures – and integrate various measures into the city to make it cooler. There are many aspects of the city that deal with warmth and someone needs to coordinate them. Imagine you have a lot of money and you buy air conditioners for the whole world: then we would end up like these cities where everyone lives inside and where it’s unbearable outside. And in Europe, in the Mediterranean cities, beauty is on the outside: we love to drink wine or beer in the evenings, have fun, walk and talk. It would be terrible if our cities ended up being uninhabitable. This is the nightmare we must avoid: we cannot turn our cities into those of Abu Dhabi or Qatar.
Q But most European cities don’t have that number.
R It doesn’t necessarily have to be called Heat Boss, it can also be people who work in the field of sustainability or resilience. Cities are creating departments that work more horizontally and less in isolation.
Q How can cities cool down?
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R The most important thing is to bring nature into the cities in a much more radical way than before: nature and water are essential to cool them. Trees not only provide shade, but also evaporate and recover thermal energy, which also cools the surrounding area. We also need shade, because it increases our sense of warmth. We need to ensure that our public spaces have more water, more shade and fewer cars because cars are a problem in cities: they generate heat because they burn fossil fuels and they emit hot air just like air conditioners. Cars and air conditioning make our public spaces hotter. That is why we must give up cars and keep air conditioning to a minimum, especially for people who need it. We must also look for water-permeable materials that do not absorb heat and increase building shading and airflow.
The most important thing is to bring nature into the cities in a much more radical way than before
Q What is Athens doing to mitigate the high temperatures?
R We do things in three categories: awareness, preparation, and redesign. As a first step, we are trying to get people (journalists, politicians, everyone) to understand how dangerous heat is: that we have longer, more intense, more frequent waves and that they are getting worse. Extreme heat killed more than 60,000 people in Europe last year, an enormous number, especially compared to any other disaster. But we’re still not ready. Until now we have not known how to properly quantify the number of heat deaths because many end up in the hospital and die of a heart attack or something else and they are not reported as heat related deaths; Now let’s count the excess mortality.
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Q What else have they done?
R We did a heatwave classification – something Seville does too – with a special algorithm for Athens. We use this algorithm to measure risk for people in three categories (1, 2 and 3). The three are very dangerous, we had one a few days ago. It’s important to categorize because that’s how our brain works: we think in categories for the most dangerous things. Also this year we are starting to give a name to the heatwaves in Greece, which Seville did with Zoe last year. When you give it a name, people give it a serious entity, they understand that it’s something that exists and that it’s dangerous.
Q And how is the risk communicated to the population?
R We have an early warning system in place: depending on the category, we send differentiated alerts to both social services staff working with the vulnerable population and those staying in nursing homes. These are messages telling you what you should do to protect yourself from the heat, that you shouldn’t go outside at certain times… We also have a program to visit elderly people in their homes to make sure they are okay. And this information is given to kindergartens, the coordination center of NGOs working with refugees or immigrants, with the homeless… We try to inform those who work with vulnerable people.
Q What measures are you taking to prepare for the heat?
R We have set up a hotline so people can call if they need help or have a question [sobre el calor]. The event will be attended by city officials and the Red Cross. We’ve also created a website so people know how to take care of themselves, cool their homes and what to do when they get heat stroke. In addition, we have a mobile application called Extrema Global that tells you every day what your personal risk is when you walk around the city and where are the coolest places to go, from public facilities with air conditioning to train stations, subway stations, swimming pools, parks… The app also shows you how to get from point A to point B along the coolest streets because all the trees are included in it. The Red Cross brings vans with water and information to tourist areas. And we’ve opened cold stores so people can go there during heat waves.
We have to make climate protection areas more interesting places or link them to cultural events.
Q I understand that this is what Barcelona calls climate protection zones.
R Yes, they are necessary for people suffering from energy poverty or who are not doing well at home. It would be great if people could come together in such air-conditioned places, especially the lonely, the elderly and the vulnerable. But at the moment they generally don’t because they feel stigmatized there, because it seems only the poor go there. We need to make them more interesting places or link them to cultural events. We open cold centers, but many people don’t go. You also need to create refreshing outdoor areas with shaded areas and children’s play areas to make them more attractive to everyone.
One of the pocket parks created by the Athens City Hall.Athens City Hall
Q What is urban transformation?
R We have created some guidelines on how to cool public spaces – streets, squares and parks – with plants, water and different materials. But if we don’t restrict cars and asphalt in cities, we don’t have enough space to make them cooler. This space can be used to create linear parks on the streets. We have created small, very dense green areas, so-called pocket parks, in streets and intersections, which serve to increase biodiversity and encourage wind. In addition, we have created narrower lanes, so cars have to drive more slowly. Spain is doing incredible things in this area: Barcelona are taking space away from cars to build super blocks. And in Oslo, most cars have already been abolished.
Q How about building shadow-free squares like the Puerta del Sol?
R Today it is criminal to build squares without shade and cooling elements because this creates higher temperatures in the city, endangers human lives and keeps people away from public space. It’s very crazy to design squares as if climate change didn’t exist.
Several tourists try to protect themselves from the heat in the new Puerta del Sol in Madrid. DAVID EXPOSITO
R What happens to the cities that don’t adapt?
R That many people will die in it and many others will lose their jobs. It will have an impact on the economy because a lot of income is lost due to extreme heat: productivity drops, people go to shops less because they stay at home… And we have to work hard to avoid water and food shortages and power cuts during heat waves. Adaptation has to do with food and medicine, logistics, and the people who will be hospitalized and die. We need to prepare our hospitals for days of extreme heat.
Q Why is it so important to talk about heat?
R Heat exposes the vulnerability of our cities and attacks the poorest: those who are physically or mentally ill, as well as the elderly and young children; It is aimed at the most vulnerable people in our society, who do not have good housing, are poorly paid, suffer from energy poverty, cannot turn on the air conditioning or live in good conditions, or cannot afford to take a car or plane and go somewhere cooler when it is very hot in the city. These people need to be protected.
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