Hangzhou's challenge of urban heat

 

Distribution of land surface temperature and surface urban heat island in the Hangzhou metropolitan area (Sheng, Lu & Huang 2015)

Prolonged extreme heat is one of the leading extreme climate events that Hangzhou regularly suffers from in summer. The Hangzhou News (2022) reported that in August 2022, the temperature in Hangzhou reached 41.8 °C, a record high since 1951, and the high temperature remained for up to 26 days. Based on my personal experience of living and studying in Hangzhou, extreme heat for weeks will not only decrease the mobility of residents and businesses in the city, which will significantly depress tourism and entertainment, but also adversely affect the sustainability of the city: more air conditioners will be turned on by residents or companies; more private cars will be on the roads, and less public transport will be used because nobody wants to walk on the streets.

The Hangzhou government has tried several approaches to cool the city, including promoting electric vehicles and Transit-oriented Development to reduce the amount of petrol-powered cars on the road, requiring the installation of solar photovoltaic panels and green rooftops to save energy and minimise insolation impacts, and restructuring industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while decelerating the rate of urbanisation. All these measures have achieved some success and have been mentioned in past posts. However, until last year, Hangzhou was still unable to avoid suffering from extreme heat weather.

I believe this inability to cool the city effectively is because these strategies are limited in their power to generate changes for the whole city. A combination of factors sustains the urban heat island effect and is so 'entrenched' in the city that it can only improve with strong and sustained measures. For instance, although Hangzhou has been promoting new energy vehicles and has become a leader in this field in China, there are still more fuel-powered vehicles on the road than electric vehicles. Therefore, strategic measures with more significant power will likely be necessary to cool cities. The United Nations Environment Programme (2021) gives some success cases on its website, which are all high-investment, high-yield projects. As a city with the capacity to implement similar initiatives, it is time for Hangzhou to consider and make a decision.

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