Due to the climate crisis, temperatures in the Netherlands are rising. Especially in the cities temperatures can soar, as houses are built close together and there is a lot of concrete. Heat stress is becoming more common. Therefore, Waag Futurelab, together with partners, investigates how to make neighbourhoods more resilient to heat stress in the project Cooling Down the City. How can residents manage heat in their homes? What neighbourhood interventions can help? And what kind of solutions can urban design provide?
Cartesius neighbourhood in Utrecht
Cooling Down the City focuses on the Cartesius neighbourhood in Utrecht, where there is a lot of new-build housing with well-insulated homes. Residents of this neighbourhood who experience heat can measure indoor temperatures using open-source sensors. Using the sensor data and their own experiences, residents engage in dialogue with one another, knowledge institutions, citizen science experts, the City of Utrecht, developers, housing associations and investors. In this way, we jointly develop action plans to combat heat stress: ranging from individual actions to neighbourhood interventions and strategies for urban development.
In this project, Waag builds on the knowledge gained from Thermo-staat, in which residents and journalists collaborated on stories and solutions relating to heat stress.
