Climate Crisis is a Mental Health Crisis — Building Smart Surfaces is an Easy Prescription

by Greg Kats, Georges C. Benjamin, and Howard Frumkin

Over the last century, cities have lost significant tree coverage and, instead, find themselves covered in dark, impervious surfaces like asphalt. As a result, our cities are uncomfortably — even dangerously — hot in the summer, far more prone to flooding and mold, less shaded, less attractive, and more dangerous. These trends are most severe in lower income neighborhoods and communities of color that are commonly 10-15 degrees hotter than the wealthiest, greenest neighborhoods in the same city. In addition, older adults who are socially isolated are at greater risk of heat-related injury and death. 

City officials, from mayors and city council members to hospital and airport authorities, will be making surface-related decisions this year as they do every year. State legislatures will lay out line items in budgets to decide how they manage resources from designated Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act dollars for metro areas. If there is one priority that should be key to urban renewal agendas, it’s the imperative to build stronger bonds among urban residents. Cities should be jumping on every opportunity to do so. If they've really done the cost-benefit analysis that includes issues of health and livability, they’ll find it’s a no-brainer: Smart surfaces are a win-win-win for communities. Great public spaces — tree-shaded, cooler reflective streets, parks, playgrounds, trails, and plazas, designed with smart surfaces, enriched with greenery, and activated with great programs — will help build those bonds and better prepare us for the climate-centered future that’s already here.