Mapping a threat: Climate change’s deadly summer heat may deepen disparities in Chicago
May 25, 2023 at 5:00 amPeople wait for a bus in temperatures approaching 100 degrees at South Kedzie Avenue and West Cermak Road in the Little Village neighborhood in June 2022.
The local aphorism that it’s “cooler by the lake” can’t fully explain these disparities. Certain inland neighborhoods, such as Ukrainian Village and Logan Square, have tended to be cooler than some communities closer to Lake Michigan, including East Pilsen and Chinatown. Urban planning decisions, such as industrial zoning, play a large role in creating and sustaining cities’ hotter areas, climate experts note.
Nestor Flores is the director of behavioral health initiatives at Pilsen Wellness Center. A green roof tops the group’s flagship building, located among some of Chicago’s hottest average surface temperatures.
The havoc wreaked by more recent heat disasters, such as last year’s record-breaking temperatures in the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest, serves as a reminder that the threat is increasing. In Chicago, scientists say mounting days of extreme heat will mark life across the city for at least the next 30 years.
The federal government’s former discriminatory practice of redlining, which rated areas as “hazardous” based largely on the number of Black and immigrant residents who lived there, has been linked to hotter temperatures in cities across the country. warehouses and truck and train terminals in industrial corridors bring constant freight traffic to nearby communities.
As chair of environmental justice at Pilsen’s St. Paul Catholic Church, Mary Gonzalez has been working with advocates from 15 other groups to pressure the city and state to deny a permit that would allow a controversial metal shredding and processing company, Sims Metal Management, to restart its operations in Pilsen.
Schwab, retired from a job with the American Planning Association, cautioned residents who live where it’s cooler not to trivialize the temperature differences in Chicago’s hotter areas. “There’s a humanitarian aspect to this that I think escapes a lot of people’s attention,” he said. Juan Antonio Espinosa, who worked as a street vendor last summer, stands with his food cart on West 47th Street in the Brighton Park neighborhood in June 2022.
Disparities in green space send an unspoken message, Santos said: “We aren’t worthy of the things that other people are worthy of. And I think that starts very young.” Alberto Rodriguez, second from right in June 2022, started the Gage Park Latinx Council’s Reclaiming Our Roots garden in a vacant lot in the Gage Park neighborhood.
For people who live in heat islands, temperatures are more intense and take longer to cool off at night. “Sometimes we can’t even sleep,” Espinosa said. At an unsheltered bus stop in Little Village, a rush-hour crowd spilled out from the shade of a nearby gas station Rich Guidice, who served as head of the Office of Emergency Management Communications under Lightfoot, will bring heat management experience to Johnson’s administration as the new mayor’s chief of staff. That agency has helmed the city’s response to National Weather Service advisories since the Richard M. Daley administration.
In early May, as Johnson prepared to take the helm at City Hall, a spokesperson said he “is committed to improving climate health for all Chicagoans and their communities.” The spokesperson said Johnson is assembling a team to examine current policies and “what will be necessary to chart a course for long-term sustainability and success” and couldn’t yet elaborate on how the administration will assess heat strategies and disparities.
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