Extreme Heat and Its Subsequent Impacts

Extreme heat and its subsequent impacts on human health and infrastructure systems require action from public health officials, city planners, and community developers. This project highlights how cities can better prepare for and address extreme heat, summarizing the work underway in Allentown, PA and city officials’ preliminary thinking on more strategic heat planning for the city. While not one of the nation’s hottest metros or in one of the nation’s hottest regions, Allentown is vulnerable to heat waves and heat islands, and is further challenged by higher poverty and asthma rates, and an older building stock (that largely pre-dates central air conditioning). As a smaller city, it also has less capacity to heat plan or to implement heat mitigation strategies.

This case study suggests that Allentown should identify key at-risk populations, create tailored interventions and best practices, and leverage current community and economic development projects and planning efforts to ensure heat management and mitigation strategies are part of those efforts.

Cool Down in the City

Developing scholarship on urban heat will be useful to cities that share Allentown’s socioeconomic, health, housing characteristics, and size, and that are increasingly facing challenges associated with extreme heat.