Tackling Heat Inequity: For many US cities, building climate resilience also requires reckoning with their racist past
DURING THE SUMMER OF 1995, a sluggish air mass settled over the Midwest for a week, smothering the region with a stifling combination of high dew points and blistering temperatures. For five days in mid-July, temperatures hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat index peaked at more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Chicago was the epicenter of the disaster. At the end of the heatwave, more than 700 of the city’s residents had died of heat-related illness. The majority of the fatalities were