There were basically two topics Bostonians wanted to talk about this week: the heat and the Celtics. In case you missed it, the Celtics captured banner number 18, and the thermometer topped a hundred-year-old record in Boston. Across the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, about 75 million people have been living under an excessive heat advisory.
As bad as the heat is, it’s often worse, and can become especially dangerous in dense urban areas with more pavement and less greenery. Because of the “urban heat island” effect, where dark paved surfaces absorb and retain heat, temperatures can range from 1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than nearby rural areas or green spaces, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
In the urban core along the Mystic River, community groups are working toward better preparation, and greater awareness, to tackle this problem, especially as heat becomes more frequent in the age of climate change.
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“I think when you talk about heat ... it’s harder to deny it as a climate issue,” said Marissa Zampino, a community organizer with the Mystic River Watershed Association. “Even if you talk to somebody who may not fully believe in the climate crisis, they can recognize that it’s hotter and hotter each summer.”
Step one to staying cooler: Identify where the problem is most acute. In 2021, several local groups, including the Mystic River Watershed Association, gathered 80 volunteers to traverse Greater Boston — via foot, bicycle, and by car — with sensors to track the heat, from early morning to late afternoon in one day.
With that data, a heat map project titled “Wicked Hot Mystic” was created to dive into how heat impacts areas block by block.
Step two: build community involvement by working with some of the most affected areas, including Chelsea, Everett, Malden, and Arlington. Zampino said they recruited local ambassadors to talk to their neighbors, and hosted outdoor activities designed to encourage people to fill out a comprehensive survey to collect more data and feedback.
“We made the events really fun to get people to talk to us about this issue, rather than it being another town hall-style thing, and that’s how we ended up engaging thousands of people and really learning that, yeah, heat is an issue and people really want to see some sort of a difference,” Zampino said.
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In combination with grant funding and community outreach, the cities along the Mystic River all worked toward implementing small public works projects as cooling solutions, fueled by resident input. For Chelsea and Everett, concerns were similar across the board: residents wanted more shade.
Bianca Bowman, the climate justice manager at GreenRoots, said it is typical for someone in the city to not encounter any shade during walks to the bus stop, grocery store, or a park. With how urbanized the area is, Chelsea is like “a pocket of heat,” Bowman said.
Step three: making it happen.
The city recently implemented a program providing small stipends for watering newly planted street saplings to increase the likelihood of a tree growing to maturity.
“We have a lot of trees but they’re new and they’re small and they’re very vulnerable to heat and drought,” Bowman said. “So building upon the people power that we have in this community to be watching over their trees and stewarding them has been a really powerful way to allow people to get involved.”
In Everett, they’re turning to not just trees, but also misting stations and shade structures above picnic tables and benches, using funds from a Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant.
Katherine Jenkins-Sullivan, a sustainability manager with the City of Everett, said they started at the Recreational Center and have mapped out plans to expand from there.
Additionally, the Everett Youth Initiative Council painted a mural with reflective paint to reflect the sun and cool things off to promote outdoor recreation.
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“We are rolling out these different implementations to really activate that space and make it a lot more engaging, accessible, and inviting to the Everett youth,” Jenkins-Sullivan said.
What’s being done along the Mystic River can also be applied across the nation. The Museum of Science — a contributor to the 2021 heat mapping project — partnered with the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina, to kickstart a three-year project to observe 30 cities across the US and monitor its heat risk factors.
“There’s a lot of data out there and a lot of understanding about what makes these communities hot,” said David Sittenfeld, director of the Center for the Environment at the Museum of Science. “So what we really want to do is allow these communities to tell us what’s really important to them and find out how they want to design this work, so that we can be responsive to their priorities and their ideas.”
The project team will focus on community input and give initial suggestions, then eventually detailed, actionable solutions to city planners.
And while the project only touches 30 cities, Sittenfeld said knowledge of what works is easily transferrable if they work in collaboration with one another.
“There’s the idea that if we help to create an understanding of the vulnerabilities through our community knowledge, maybe all of us will feel a little bit more invested,” said Sittendfeld, adding that cities working collaboratively “can become more resilient in a way that will work for everybody.”
Emilia Wisniewski can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @emiliaxski.