Smart Surfaces Blog

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is shattering records. Hurricane Milton, one of three hurricanes to form simultaneously in October for the first time, was also the fastest hurricane to intensify into a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico….Clearly, we’re living in an unnatural and horrific new normal fueled by climate change…

The dominant topic of every small talk and quaint conversation in between jumps through tree-lined shade and, if you’re among the fortunate, into air-conditioned spaces is the heat. As most of us have noticed, suffering under oppressive temperatures in the aptly-termed “heat dome,”

In recent years, the just transition movement has increasingly focused on energy, in what some have referred to as “a new front-line in environmental justice research and activism” (Sze and London 2008). The concept of energy justice focuses separately on energy concerns among the broader issues addressed in the environmental justice movement (Bickerstaff et al. 2013; Jenkins et al. 2018) by integrating social equity principles into energy systems.

With more paved area, less greenery and more dark surfaces, cities experience what is called an urban heat island effect - substantially higher summer temperatures and worse air pollution than the surrounding suburban and rural areas.

How cities manage the sun and rain that fall on them in the immediate future has a huge impact on city resilience and on residents’ health and quality of life.

With every new year comes new resolutions — most of which don’t last through the spring. However, one crucial resolution we can all make that’s achievable is to ask our governments and companies, where we live and work, to shift from surfaces that make us hotter and threaten our health to surfaces that reduce global warming, extreme heat, pollution and flooding.

Green Living Plan: It’s time to explore and respond to the urgent mental health aspects of a rapidly boiling and hotter world. It won't take a whole lot of money or time to do that.

By adopting Smart Surfaces city wide Baltimore will cool its downtown 5 degrees, save $13 billion, slow climate change, protect its tourism industry and solve structural urban racial inequities. Globally, within 2 decades 300 million city dwellers will be exposed to heat waves that exceed human capacity to survive. Here is how we solve that.

SSC Leadership Spotlight: Suzy Li (SL) is a Smart Surfaces Scholar pursuing her PhD in Building Performance & Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University with a focus on Smart Surfaces. She recently published a Smart Surfaces Guide for city policymakers to use as a decision-making guide for their surfaces.

Alex Reid, a rising junior Morehead Cain Scholar at University of North Carolina, analyzes the expected loss in summer tourism revenue as a result of climate change-driven surges in extreme heat using the LA Zoo as a case study.

Sam Sands, a Research Intern with the Coalition, analyzes and quantifies the relationship between ambient temperature and electricity demand.

Caroline Zepecki, a Research Analyst Intern at SSC, researches the potential for implementing reflective coatings on roadways and parking lots city-wide. Reflective surfaces are an important element of a Smart Surfaces strategy.

A Q+A with Mark Conway, Baltimore City Council member, on the city’s progress towards adopting Smart Surfaces.

A Q+A with Jennifer Roberts, member of SSC’s Steering Committee, former Mayor of Charlotte and Director of The Path to Positive Communities Program with EcoDistricts.

A Q+A with Ian Riley, a member of SSC’s Steering Committee. Ian is the CEO of the World Cement Assocation.

A Q+A with Pastor William Lamar, a member of SSC’s Steering Committee and Pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

A Q+A with Julie Katzman, a member of SSC’s Steering Committee. Julie was a former COO of the Inter-American Development Bank and currently serves on the board of the MacArthur Foundation, Instituto de Empresa, Laboratoria.la, and Nilus.

Robert Edwards, a Research Analyst Intern at SSC, reflects upon his work to educate and advise Congressional staff on Smart Surfaces.

A Q+A with Mark Conway, a new member of SSC’s Steering Committee. Mark is the Baltimore City District 4 City Councilmember as well as the Executive Vice-President of the Chesapeake Conservancy.

The Smart Surfaces Coalition sponsors and collaborates with its partners on innovative, high-impact government and market strategies to accelerate smart surfaces adoption more than tenfold. One important project, sponsored by the Coalition, is Global Cool Cities Alliance’s Cool Roadways Partnership.