Neighbourhoods with racialized and lower-income families suffer more from extreme heat in Canadian cities, climate scientists say, echoing new U.S. research.
Low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods, according to researchers from the University of California San Diego.
“It's like a cascade kind of effect at this time this year,” Altaf Arain, director of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. He wasn’t involved in the study but said “there are a lot of deaths for a lot of people who don’t have the ability to cool down.” Other studies in the U.S. note the effects of extreme heat in cities fall along racial lines, or make heat waves even worse. The latest U.S. findings are especially troubling given how half of the world's population now lives in urban areas, with dense cities across the world facing the same trend of having hotter heat surface temperatures.
“But who can do renovations for their homes?” Khirfan said, explaining that a person’s income directly impacts whether they’re able to guard against problems such as flooding or extreme heat.Montreal researcher Joanna Eyquem, who examines extreme heat, agrees. She said shoring up more green spaces could increase property values, and therefore plans must ensure they don’t inadvertently price out lower-income and racialized people.
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