Welcome to The Philanthropist’s Conversation: Social Architecture to Address Urban Heat. In this four-part series, we embark on a fictional journey around the world to talk about heat and how it’s changing our lives.

Why is heat more dangerous in an urban environment? What factors affect how we live with high temperatures? And how can we respond to heat efficiently, and responsibly?

Today, our host Paula and her co-host Jack walk the streets of London to answer these foundational questions. Together, they take a tour of their city to find out how heat affects Londoners, and what we can do to adapt.

This episode outlines the risks that urban heat poses for our health, our services and our social system at large. It also provides tangible applications for adaptation, on an individual and collective level. We discuss the mechanisms that drive heat in urban environments – like the “urban heat island effect” – and interrogate specialists in the field about the changes needed for heat resilience. And as you’ll see, it all starts with social architecture: an approach to design and innovation that can reshape our behaviours.

Ready for this conversation? Then let’s venture into London and beat the heat.

Highlights:

• Introducing London & the heat problem (0:37)
• Factors driving urban heat (3:52)
• Who is vulnerable to high temperatures? (7:02)
• Heat as a systemic issue (9:25)
• The “urban heat island effect” (12:40)
• The Urban Heat Snapshot with Josef Hargrave (16:37)
• Is London ready for extreme weather events? (21:17)
• Resilient solutions and social architecture to mitigate heat (24:33)
• Solutions at the individual level (28:26)
• A resilient approach to innovation (31:26)
• Political commitment to heat resilience: a tenuous question (33:30)
• Chasing collaboration and engagement beyond London (35:05)

• Episode Resources
• Pegasus Website
• Arup Website
• Joseph Hargrave LinkedIn
• Lenio Myrivili LinkedIn
• Julie Roussel LinkedIn