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Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in both the summer and winter, to 2059, showing which cities may become more dependent on air conditioning. The answer looks to be many.
In his original study, Gray had 9 climatic categories, all of which were based on average high and low temperatures throughout the year. Category 1 was you definitely don’t need AC or heat. These cities are essentially perfect year round. And category 9 was you definitely need heat and AC. These cities are basically the worst places on earth to occupy from a climate perspective.
Here is that climate classification system in lovely chart form (note his caption):
The climatic utopias ended up being places like Bogotá, Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, San Diego, São Paulo, and Sydney. The worst places were the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.
But one factor that is not included in the study is humidity, which Gray rightly points out has a meaningful impact on comfort. Toronto, for example, is classified in his system as category 7. Heat needed. But AC definitely not needed. Personally, I would bump us up to category 8: AC preferred, but not needed.
Still, this is an interesting study. There are relatively few cities with so-called perfect climates. And I have always found these sorts of climates fascinating because they empower a very different kind of relationship to outside spaces.
Architect Bjarke Ingels will be in Toronto next week to talk about how architecture can create communities and about a new project that he is working on with developers Westbank and Allied REIT here in the city.
The last time I heard Bjarke speak was when I was in undergrad and he had recently started a firm called PLOT with Julien De Smedt. That was over 10 years ago. So I am looking forward to this talk. If you’re also going to be attending, tweet me and let’s try and connect at the event.
In anticipation of that, I thought I would share a book that his firm published about a year ago called, BIG, HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation.
What’s interesting about the book is that all of the projects are organized according to climatic location – literally hot to cold. That’s why the pages themselves start as red and end up in dark blue.
Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in both the summer and winter, to 2059, showing which cities may become more dependent on air conditioning. The answer looks to be many.
In his original study, Gray had 9 climatic categories, all of which were based on average high and low temperatures throughout the year. Category 1 was you definitely don’t need AC or heat. These cities are essentially perfect year round. And category 9 was you definitely need heat and AC. These cities are basically the worst places on earth to occupy from a climate perspective.
Here is that climate classification system in lovely chart form (note his caption):
The climatic utopias ended up being places like Bogotá, Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, San Diego, São Paulo, and Sydney. The worst places were the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.
But one factor that is not included in the study is humidity, which Gray rightly points out has a meaningful impact on comfort. Toronto, for example, is classified in his system as category 7. Heat needed. But AC definitely not needed. Personally, I would bump us up to category 8: AC preferred, but not needed.
Still, this is an interesting study. There are relatively few cities with so-called perfect climates. And I have always found these sorts of climates fascinating because they empower a very different kind of relationship to outside spaces.
Architect Bjarke Ingels will be in Toronto next week to talk about how architecture can create communities and about a new project that he is working on with developers Westbank and Allied REIT here in the city.
The last time I heard Bjarke speak was when I was in undergrad and he had recently started a firm called PLOT with Julien De Smedt. That was over 10 years ago. So I am looking forward to this talk. If you’re also going to be attending, tweet me and let’s try and connect at the event.
In anticipation of that, I thought I would share a book that his firm published about a year ago called, BIG, HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation.
What’s interesting about the book is that all of the projects are organized according to climatic location – literally hot to cold. That’s why the pages themselves start as red and end up in dark blue.
One of the things that I have been wondering lately with all of the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma is if we need to be viewing these catastrophic incidents as the result of climate change or if we’re being too quick to apply the availability heuristic.
The latter being: “Look at all of these horrible hurricanes. Climate change must really be here and happening right now.”
Albert Wenger is covering this topic on his blog right now through his “Uncertainty Wednesday” series and has also written similar posts in the past. The current series is still ongoing, but a few things stood out to me as I was going through the archives. I’ll mention 3 of them today.
Firstly, it’s important to understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what’s happening at any given moment. Climate, on the other hand, is the statistics of weather. Albert proposes the following definition for climate, which I like:
“Climate is the probability distribution of possible weather events.”
Secondly, the data is clear: We have gotten far better at forecasting weather over the years. Accuracy has greatly improved.
But we’re still pretty bad at it, particularly over longer periods of time. According this graph, we’re about 97.5% accurate for 3 day forecasts, but only about 40% accurate for 10 day forecasts. So by “longer periods of time”, I’m really talking about forecasts that go out beyond one week. That’s not very far into the future.
Thirdly, Albert has this post from last year where he talks about the flooding we saw on the U.S. east coast and also the slowing down of the Gulf Stream.
This is fascinating, and also frightening, because the Gulf Stream is a vital ocean current. Among other things, it warms western and northern Europe – likely making it warmer than it otherwise would be – and, according to some models, it lowers the sea level along the U.S. east coast by as much as 3 feet.
The frightening part is that as the Gulf Stream slows it also stops pulling away the same amount of water from the coast, which is arguably why mean sea level is increasing.
I say “arguably”, but the data clearly suggests an acceleration in the rate of rise. Here are two charts that Albert prepared. And there’s more: The U.S. east coast may also have it worse in terms of sea level rise precisely because of this phenomenon.
This is an interesting and, of course, important topic. This post obviously doesn’t do it justice, but I am trying to learn as much as I can. Writing always helps with that.
Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash
It’s a direct response to the fact that modern architecture and modern building systems largely did away with regional and climatic variations. Buildings were designed, no matter their location, to look exactly the same.
To a certain extent, globalization makes this somewhat inevitable. But climate is climate. And I believe that architecture is stronger when it responds to local context.
If you were in Toronto this past weekend – perhaps for the NBA All Star Game – you’re probably well aware that Toronto sometimes gets cold. So it will be interesting to see what kind of strategies they employ for their upcoming project.
If you want to hear Bjarke talk about this book and some of their projects, check out this video from the Architectural Association in London.
One of the things that I have been wondering lately with all of the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma is if we need to be viewing these catastrophic incidents as the result of climate change or if we’re being too quick to apply the availability heuristic.
The latter being: “Look at all of these horrible hurricanes. Climate change must really be here and happening right now.”
Albert Wenger is covering this topic on his blog right now through his “Uncertainty Wednesday” series and has also written similar posts in the past. The current series is still ongoing, but a few things stood out to me as I was going through the archives. I’ll mention 3 of them today.
Firstly, it’s important to understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what’s happening at any given moment. Climate, on the other hand, is the statistics of weather. Albert proposes the following definition for climate, which I like:
“Climate is the probability distribution of possible weather events.”
Secondly, the data is clear: We have gotten far better at forecasting weather over the years. Accuracy has greatly improved.
But we’re still pretty bad at it, particularly over longer periods of time. According this graph, we’re about 97.5% accurate for 3 day forecasts, but only about 40% accurate for 10 day forecasts. So by “longer periods of time”, I’m really talking about forecasts that go out beyond one week. That’s not very far into the future.
Thirdly, Albert has this post from last year where he talks about the flooding we saw on the U.S. east coast and also the slowing down of the Gulf Stream.
This is fascinating, and also frightening, because the Gulf Stream is a vital ocean current. Among other things, it warms western and northern Europe – likely making it warmer than it otherwise would be – and, according to some models, it lowers the sea level along the U.S. east coast by as much as 3 feet.
The frightening part is that as the Gulf Stream slows it also stops pulling away the same amount of water from the coast, which is arguably why mean sea level is increasing.
I say “arguably”, but the data clearly suggests an acceleration in the rate of rise. Here are two charts that Albert prepared. And there’s more: The U.S. east coast may also have it worse in terms of sea level rise precisely because of this phenomenon.
This is an interesting and, of course, important topic. This post obviously doesn’t do it justice, but I am trying to learn as much as I can. Writing always helps with that.
Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash
It’s a direct response to the fact that modern architecture and modern building systems largely did away with regional and climatic variations. Buildings were designed, no matter their location, to look exactly the same.
To a certain extent, globalization makes this somewhat inevitable. But climate is climate. And I believe that architecture is stronger when it responds to local context.
If you were in Toronto this past weekend – perhaps for the NBA All Star Game – you’re probably well aware that Toronto sometimes gets cold. So it will be interesting to see what kind of strategies they employ for their upcoming project.
If you want to hear Bjarke talk about this book and some of their projects, check out this video from the Architectural Association in London.
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