Reducing Chicago’s ‘Urban Heat Island’ Effect

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (0:04)
Hey, Chicago, I'm Sasha-Ann Simons, and this is In the Loop.
But first, have you ever traveled into and around the city and wondered why it suddenly feels 5 or 10 degrees hotter in some parts? Well, chances are, it's not your imagination. Where you live and even what your neighborhood is made of can make a huge difference in how dangerous extreme heat becomes. And this month, that danger has turned deadly. On top of breathing in smoky, unhealthy air from northern wildfires, six people in Cook County have died in July from heat-related causes. That marks a stretch of hot weather deaths that we haven't seen since at least 2015
In this episode, we'll dig into the urban heat island effect, why some Chicago neighborhoods take the hit of rising temperatures more than others, and how to keep residents cool as heat waves become our norm. At the table was Max Berkelhammer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at UIC, Lindy Wordlaw, who's an assistant commissioner to the Chicago Department of Environment, and Nedra Sims-Fears, executive director of the Greater Chatham Initiative. Now, as I mentioned, the city's been dealing with two major weather issues, heat and that smoke-filled air. I asked the commissioner how her team's been ensuring residents stay safe. Here's Commissioner Wordlaw.

**Lindy Wordlaw** (1:25)
When we understood what was coming ahead, we started to have conversations with, led by the mayor's office, with Office of Emergency Management and Communications, Department of Public Health, and Department of Family and Support Services and other agencies like that, to really talk about, okay, what's ahead? How can we communicate to residents, prepare people, get folks ready? But not just the communications part, but also looking at programs and supports that we could do. And so, in an example, working with the Culture of Affairs folks and Park District to what are events that we have outside that we should be bringing indoors or even canceling, thinking about those things. What kind of PPE equipment can we not only have for our outdoor workers on our own city staff, but getting them out into folks that would need them. And so having our outreach teams, our community health workers out in communication with people that are outdoors more often. And so, you know, visiting homeless encampments, just out talking to folks and getting the word out, getting rides to cooling centers if needed.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (2:44)
Because time is of the essence when it comes to a situation like this, right? How are you coping with the recent extreme weather, Nedra?

**Nedra Sims-Fears** (2:52)
The extreme weather is really challenging. Being a resident of the South Side and championing for communities there, Chatham, Avalon Park, Auburn Gresham and Greater Grand Crossing. We know that we have a disproportionate heat island effect.
And that is because many of our corridors, 75th Street, 79th Street, 87th Street, those trees were taken off those corridors maybe 20 years ago.
Through the great partnership with the Department of Forestry and Moreton Arboretum, we have put back over 700 trees along those corridors, so that people walking along 79th Street, 75th Street getting to the red line, it becomes more manageable and less hot, but those are young trees and it takes a while for them to mature, so we're moving in the right direction. The other thing that we learned is that we've conducted what is a tree canopy, which is literally where people count the trees in the neighborhood. We partnered with Chicago State University and we learned that we have a 17 percent tree canopy, which is consistent with the average neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. But best practice is to have a 40 percent tree canopy. So we really are working with residents in the city of Chicago to plant more trees, because the more trees we have, the cooler the neighborhoods become because trees provide shade. I think that's really the big takeaway. You need shade in order to cool down. It helps keep your house cool. It helps reduce your utility bills. And it's also good for the environment.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (4:46)
And one of those sister organizations you mentioned, the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, opened its doors as a cooling center. Absolutely.

**Nedra Sims-Fears** (4:53)
How's that working out? Oh, we are so proud of having Carlos Nelson and Greater Auburn Development Corporation have their healthy hub, because the cooling centers is really great to have those during the day. But at night, you can come to our neighborhoods and see people sitting outside on the sidewalk at night, because we have vintage 1920 three-story walk-ups and many of those buildings do not have air conditioning. And it is a challenge when you have these really high temperatures and it does not calm down, it does not cool down at night. And so people are literally sleeping on the street and it is a problem.