Heat Resilience Is a Social Justice Issue

The paved surfaces and closely packed buildings that make up our cities and towns are trapping heat at a much greater intensity than its surrounding countryside. It's called the "Urban Heat Island Effect," and in Vancouver, the Downtown Eastside, Marpole, and Southeast Vancouver are hot spots.

To offset this phenomenon, many cities are growing their urban forest with green roofs, community gardens and trees in parks, private properties and on the street.

The City of Vancouver set out to plant 150,000 street trees as part of its Greenest City Action Plan as a way to provide canopy cover, reduce high temperatures through shade, and improve air quality. But between 2010 and 2014, of the 9,600 trees planted, only 78 were planted in the Downtown Eastside.

Home to heat vulnerable populations—including low-income residents, disabled people, People of Colour, and unhoused people—the Downtown Eastside is especially warm. And according to a study by Environmental Health Perspectives, Downtown Eastside residents are exposed to higher heat risks compared to other neighbourhoods in Vancouver.

“Heat resilience is not just the ability to cope with one heat wave,” says Kit Wong-Stevens, who currently studies the health impacts of nature-based solutions for heat resilience in the Urban Natures Lab. “It’s ensuring the health of everyone living in your city and making sure that your city is livable.”

Based out of the University of British Columbia, Kit also adds, “We can provide trees and map out how urban forests are distributed in a city, but we also need to think about the tools that people need to withstand extreme heat events.”

Bridging the Gap with a Heat Resilience Plan

When the City rolled out cooling centres in community centres, parks, libraries, and other locations around Vancouver, Gabrielle Peters wondered how she would get there. As a wheelchair user and commissioner with the Vancouver City Planning Commission, getting to and from these locations proved to be exhausting, especially for disabled and/or chronically ill people who might need to carry medical or adaptive equipment with them.

But it was the closing of Oppenheimer Park, one of the few accessible shady spaces in the Downtown Eastside, that galvanized Gabrielle to incorporate her first-hand experiences into a memorandum to the Vancouver City Council, Mayor, and Board of Parks and Recreation. Penned with fellow commissioner Amina Yasin, the memorandum makes recommendations to help prepare the City for extreme heat events.

Among its recommendations, the Commission asked that small parks with accessible seating and shade be developed in more neighbourhoods; multi-height water fountains, misting stations, and low-pressure sprinklers be made available during extreme heat waves; and buildings meet “design standards that create cover including shade, cooling and improve air quality such as overhangs, landscaping and air conditioning.”

While planting trees remains important in reducing the Urban Heat Island Effect, strategies that address the racial and socioeconomic disparities magnified by heat waves alleviate what Gabrielle refers to as “hot spots of inequity.”

“It's the indoor air temperature that often kills people in heat waves—that’s a housing design issue,” she says, referring to 569 heat-related deaths in British Columbia in June.

Unanimously supported by the Vancouver City Council, Gabrielle is hopeful there’s a commitment to “designing a city that people can survive in and live in together.”

Of the short-term and long-term recommendations that address accessibility and affordability barriers, the memorandum advocates for air conditioners and purifiers to be provided to social housing, low-income residents, disabled people and seniors.

The creation of a “Vancouver extreme weather equitable response work group" consisting of city staff, representatives from Vancouver Coastal Health and BC Housing, and community members—especially those who are disabled, poor or racialized—was also recommended.

As Kit notes, being represented by your city government or urban planning committees makes for better decision-making.

“Having access to an urban forest is great, but being able to have meaningful engagement in decision making and community engagement projects, being able to talk to city council, having your concerns and priorities recognized in city decision making? That's very important.”

Learn more about the impacts of climate change.

Discover how climate scientists like Dr. Robert Way collect and use weather data to understand climate change and predict climate patterns.

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Bridging the Gap with a Heat Resilience Plan

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