Cooler Communities for All: Designing Equitable Heat Solutions - 1.0 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 07/29/2024

Extreme heat is the deadliest of all weather-related disasters and creates acute and chronic health risks. Dangerous heat also impacts low-income and underserved communities the most, given these communities have far less tree canopy. Learn about the evidence for equitable, nature-based solutions to reduce temperatures. Discover how to visualize thermal disparities and implement impactful designs from the city to neighborhood scales.

Learning Objectives:

Recognize how extreme heat disproportionately impacts low-income and historically marginalized communities.

Understand how to use data and visualization tools to highlight areas of high heat vulnerability within communities.

Gain practical knowledge on planning and designing sites and communities through nature-based solutions that reduce temperatures and increase resilience.

Explore how landscape architects collaborate with cities and community-based organizations to communicate extreme heat data to create heat-resilient communities.

Image above: Heat map of Omaha, Nebraska / Salvador Lindquist, ASLA, and Keenan Gibbons, ASLA

Daniella Hirschfeld

Assistant Professor - Climate Adaptation Planning, Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice

Utah State University

Salvador Lindquist, ASLA

Assistant Professor - Landscape Architecture

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, College of Architecture

Wes Michaels, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP

Principal

Spackman Mossop Michaels

Wes Michaels is a Principal of Spackman Mossop Michaels landscape architects. His work is focused on building adaptive communities through green infrastructure, vacant land strategies, ecological restoration, and health-focused landscapes, with a primary focus on how the embedded cultural understanding of a landscape within a community can drive design and planning decisions. Wes is an Associate Professor at Tulane University and a Faculty Fellow at the Tulane Center on Climate and Urbanism. Wes has been awarded several ASLA National Awards, and his work has been exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.