Urban greening for heat-resilient neighbourhoods

There is ever more interest in how we can keep cities cool under rising summer temperatures. Maintaining and enhancing urban greenery is one potential way to mitigate against extreme hot weather and cool our neighbourhoods. But this greenery needs to be planned and maintained carefully, and it is vital that communities’ perspectives and experiences are taken into account as heat risk reduction strategies are developed.

The Open University, working in partnership with Sniffer and Climate Ready Clyde in Scotland and the Taipei GR Lab at National Taiwan University in Taiwan, are undertaking research in Glasgow and Taipei to understand how communities have experienced hot weather so far, and how trees and green spaces might help to reduce this heat risk in future.

The project 'Urban Greening for Heat-Resilient Neighbourhoods' is funded by the British Academy (KF6220287), and follows on from the ESRC-NSTC-supported project 'Urban Greening for Climate-Resilient Neighbourhoods: Linking Scholars from the UK and Taiwan', which ran from July 2021 to July 2023 (ES/W000172/1).