Dallas is working with the Smart Surfaces Coalition to help cool off its urban core. (Curtis Simmons/CC BY-NC 2.0).
Dallas is partnering with the Smart Surfaces Coalition to help combat the city’s increasingly hot urban core. Here’s what they’re planning to do.
The city of Dallas recently announced its partnership with the Smart Surfaces Coalition to launch the Smart Surfaces Project, a three-year initiative designed to help decrease the heat of its urban core. “Urban core” is typically defined as the most densely populated, active, and central area of a city. Culture Map Dallas notes that an analysis of the city identified that these urban areas tend to be at least 14 degrees hotter than other areas of the state due to the increased presence of parking lots, roadways, and roofs.
The idea behind the project is to incorporate new “smart surfaces,” like trees, to help absorb some of the heat from impermeable surfaces, like roofs, especially during the hotter summer months. The Smart Surfaces Coalition will work alongside the city of Dallas to help identify the most flood-prone and warmest areas to ensure these proposed solutions will have the desired effect. In addition to cooling down the urban core, adding smart surfaces will help lessen stormwater flooding as well.
Let’s take a closer look at what these surfaces are and when the work is scheduled to begin.
Smart surfaces include a variety of solutions
If this is your first time hearing the term “smart surfaces,” you’re not alone. According to the Smart Surfaces Coalition, smart surfaces include things like reflective pavements and roofs, solar PV, trees, and porous and permeable pavements. They have a lot of helpful resources, including an educational YouTube video you can check out here to learn more. Essentially, adding in more gardens and trees around Dallas, as well as swapping out darker-colored materials used for roofs and roadways with lighter-colored ones, will help decrease the city’s overall temperature.
Culture Map Dallas notes that these changes will theoretically decrease summer temperatures by about three to six degrees. And, according to Greg Kats, the CEO and founder of Smart Surfaces Coalition, “These strategies cut energy bills, protect vulnerable populations, and strengthen the economy.” He added that the Coalition was “proud to partner with the city of Dallas to create solutions to make the city’s urban areas cooler, healthier, and safer for all residents, especially for outdoor workers, children, seniors, athletes and unhoused people.”
When will the changes start to happen?
The Smart Surfaces Project is expected to take about three years to complete and will receive funding from both the JPB Foundation and the Waverley Street Foundation. A designated team of energy efficiency policy experts, public health experts, and data analysts will ensure that Dallas is reaching its goals and staying on track.
While there isn’t a set timeline for when residents and visitors can hope to experience an overall cooling of the urban core, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, Georges C. Benjamin, MD, says the work will be worth it. “Designing healthier cities is paramount in the reality of our rapidly warming world. Outdated, heat-trapping surfaces put millions at risk—especially in underserved neighborhoods,” he said.
This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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