Cities have a unique and significant role to play in responding to climate change. Many are already doing so by adopting legal and policy tools to encourage the use of smart surfaces—a group of technologies and design strategies that mitigate the effects of climate change in urban environments, especially extreme […]
Daniel J. Metzger
5 posts
Every summer now feels like Groundhog Day. More heat records broken. Soon, we’ll have more school days canceled (take Philadelphia for example where nearly 30 percent of city schools recently shut down due to lack of cooling systems). We already have more heat-related deaths (in fact, according to a study, […]
On August 14 the federal government released the United States’ first National Heat Strategy. As it stands today, the Strategy is a major step forward for coordinated federal action to recognize and address extreme heat and it confirms that agencies across the federal government are making this a high priority […]
Building codes have a major influence on how local governments respond to climate change. They prescribe enforceable requirements for the materials that buildings are made of, for how living and working spaces are designed, and critically, for what kinds of environmental possibilities new buildings must be prepared to accommodate. For […]
By opening up new tax credits for tax-exempt entities, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides a vehicle to fund smart surface projects while increasing solar electricity generation. Smart surfaces are ones that combat the effects of excessive sunlight, rainfall, and heat, especially in the urban heat islands, that pose particular […]