September 27, 2019

Study: Low income people of color hit with more heat

Planetizen -Meg Anderson and Sean McMinn report on the connection between urban heat islands and neighborhoods with high proportions of low-income people of color.

The article starts with the example of Baltimore, where the franklin Square neighborhood is "hotter than about two-thirds of the other neighborhoods in Baltimore — about 6 degrees hotter than the city's coolest neighborhood."

"It's also in one of the city's poorest communities, with more than one-third of residents living in poverty," according to Anderson and McMinn.

"In dozens of major U.S. cities, low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be hotter than their wealthier counterparts," according to the article. "Those exposed to that extra heat are often a city's most vulnerable: the poorest and, our data show, disproportionately people of color."

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