UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

This project analyzes various decision-making frameworks for climate adaptations within the context of streetscape cooling interventions. By focusing on the streetscape, the project brings together the complex issues facing governance, climate science, and community to analyze a specific hazard within an important component of the urban environment. Our goal was to find the contributing factors of the streetscape to the UHI and understand non-carbon impacts of the UHI and how to address those impacts. We determined three primary contributors to the UHI at the streetscape: impervious surfaces; vegetation (or lack thereof); and anthropogenic heat generation. With these in mind, we discuss three major cooling interventions for streetscape: cool pavement; transit shelters; and, tree canopy. Focusing on reducing the contributing factors to UHI (impervious surfaces, vegetation, and anthropogenic heat), we may be able to avoid the single metric of success thinking that has slowed cool pavement and other innovative cooling strategies. We suggest decreasing reliance on carbon based decision making frameworks, encouraging widespread bus shelters, implementing cool pavement on parking lots, and pursing a holistic approach to streetscape cooling.