New ordinance requires steps to protect workers from extreme heat
For some workers in the city of Boston, a new ordinance passed by the City Council will mean better protection against extreme heat next summer. That local legislation requires the city of Boston and its contractors to develop a heat illness prevention plan that would include providing employees with opportunities to access shade, water and rest as well as to receive training on heat-related illness and develop response plans in case of emergency.
2 ways cities can beat the heat: Which is best, urban trees or cool roofs?
The temperature in an urban neighborhood with few trees can be more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius) higher than in nearby suburbs. That means air conditioning works harder, straining the electrical grid and leaving communities vulnerable to power outages. There are some proven steps that cities can take to help cool the air – planting trees that provide shade and moisture, for example, or creating cool roofs that reflect solar energy away from the neighborhood rather than absorbing it. But do these steps pay off everywhere?
What’s stifling city climate action? Municipal finance practices, one report says
Claudia Diezmartínez wants city officials to be more curious about how local climate programs are funded. The funding process is shaping which projects cities pursue and who they benefit, according to a February 2024 Nature Climate Change paper co-authored by Diezmartínez, a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University.
Professor Partners with Boston Public Schools to Study Classroom Air Quality
The most comprehensive database of Massachusetts’ affordable housing inventory spotlights the use of age-restricted housing to maintain racial segregation, its creators say. In 44 cities and towns, not a single unit of non-age-restricted affordable housing has been built despite state laws such as Chapter 40B that make it easier for developers to build income-restricted projects.
Folding and Collaborating
In their CSSH essay, “Religion in the Folded City: Origami and the Boundaries of the Chronotope” (65-4, 2023), Robert P. Weller and Keping Wu “explore the complex interrelationships and workings of chronotopes through the idea of the fold,” which allows them to study what happens when different space-times touch and interact with each other. Their Behind the Scenes essay takes us into the past and the future of this work, as they describe the truly collaborative research and writing process that led to their insights and imagine ways to apply folding to contexts beyond what they analyze in the essay.
The idea of ‘tree equity’ is taking root
Founded in 2018, Speak for the Trees has been hosting their “tree walks” to talk about the benefits of trees, and to look at where there should be more of them. It’s an issue of equity. Trees provide a wide range of benefits, from filtering out air pollution to improving mental health — but not everyone gets to feel those benefits. From neighborhood to neighborhood, or even street to street, there are often wide disparities in the number of trees, which can have a broad impact on the overall health of a community. On a local, state and national level, though, governments and nonprofits are investing to make up the gap as the concept of “tree equity” is beginning to take root.
Gendered Differences in Mobility and the Demand for Transport: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Urban Ethiopia
Inadequate transport infrastructure in growing cities can lead to congestion and decreased mobility, making it crucial to prioritise efficient and safe transportation solutions. Investigating gender-specific travel demand in Ethiopia demonstrates the value of contextually appropriate and equitable transportation policies and services for rapidly growing cities.
Just Environmentalism
Climate change impacts in cities do not hit every resident equally. Consider Portland, Ore. Residents of Southeast Portland’s low-income and communities of color live with the carbon and particulate matter emitted from Interstate 5, which slices through the urban core. Heat waves disproportionately threaten residents who can’t afford air conditioning or who work outdoors. Portland’s tree canopy—which mitigates climate change by capturing carbon emissions—is more concentrated in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods west of the Willamette River. Low-lying communities on the east side of the river, which are less affluent and more Black and brown, are more vulnerable to extreme impacts from storms and flooding—like the 1996 flood that killed eight people and ruined countless businesses.
Boston Medical Center researchers report a surge in depression and anxiety among children of color
In “Changes in psychosocial functioning among urban, school‑age children during the COVID‑19 pandemic,” researchers found the rates of depression and anxiety among children of color aged from 5 to 11 spiked from 5% to 18% during the pandemic. The study, published in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, is one of the first to quantify the psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 among children of color using data collected before and during the pandemic, according to an article in Health City, an online publication run by BMC.
Urban Forests May be Storing More Carbon Dioxide Than They Emit
For more than a decade, Ecologist and biogeochemist Lucy Hutyra from Boston University has been studying how the planet’s “lungs” are affected when big forests are cut down into smaller areas, a phenomenon known as forest fragmentation.