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.
Read MoreHow 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.
Read MoreWith 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.
Read MoreGreen 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreSSC 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.
Read MoreAlex 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.
Read MoreSam Sands, a Research Intern with the Coalition, analyzes and quantifies the relationship between ambient temperature and electricity demand.
Read MoreCaroline 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.
Read MoreA Q+A with Mark Conway, Baltimore City Council member, on the city’s progress towards adopting Smart Surfaces.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreA Q+A with Ian Riley, a member of SSC’s Steering Committee. Ian is the CEO of the World Cement Assocation.
Read MoreA Q+A with Pastor William Lamar, a member of SSC’s Steering Committee and Pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreDavid Bowers has been a leader in the sustainable and affordable housing space for decades and provides insight into his work and the future of the industry.
Read MoreA Q+A with Cathy Lin, Director of Research at the International Downtown Association, about her research, the importance of downtowns, and how smart surfaces can help.
Read MoreA Q+A with Suzy Li, a Graduate Smart Surfaces Scholar who is completing her PhD thesis on a Smart Surface taxonomy, about her research, our environment, and the importance of smart surfaces.
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