New York City’s ‘Cool Roofs’ Program: Fighting Heat and Inequality

Heat

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The largest city in the United States began in 2009 to paint roofs white to mitigate the effects of heat. The program also aims to correct very marked territorial inequalities.

In the heat of July, when for a week the thermometer showed more than 40°C near Yankee Stadium, the poorest were once again the first to succumb to the heat wave. According to New York City Hall, half of the average 350 people killed each year by heat waves were black. The community, which represents just under 25% of the city’s population, is twice as at risk, having less access to air conditioning, medical care, but above all a refreshing urban environment. In the Bronx alone, the most disadvantaged of the five boroughs, the large boroughs of the megalopolis, there is a difference of more than 1°C between the leafy neighborhood of Riverdale, on the banks of the Hudson, and the immense mineral enclave of Fordham, further east, where the housing density is high. The Bronx alone has 22 of these “heat islands”, high-risk areas, while there are only three in the entire borough of Manhattan.

In this context, the ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg (an Independent from the Republican movement), focused on public health and climate change, had initiated in 2009 in the Bronx and in several neighborhoods of Brooklyn a campaign aimed at repainting in white the traditional black bitumen that covers the roofs of buildings, in order to better reverberate solar energy. Taken over by his Democratic successor Bill de Blasio, the “cool roofs” program has already made it possible in di

2023-08-21 23:32:46
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