Urban heat as a structural development challenge in rapidly growing cities
6 affiliations
- 1Department of Geography, Lalbaba College, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India
- 2Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
- 3State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- 4School of Architecture and Built Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle, United Kingdom
- 5Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America
- 6Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America
Abstract
Urban heat is increasingly emerging as a major constraint on sustainable development, particularly in rapidly growing cities of the Global South. Although urban heat is commonly addressed through local adaptation and urban heat reduction measures such as urban greening, cool and super cool roofs, and building retrofits or passive design, these interventions are increasingly implemented against a backdrop of accelerating planetary warming, fiscal constraints, and persistent socio-economic inequalities. This Essay argues that urban heat should be understood not merely as an environmental, technological, or urban planning challenge, but as a structural development problem arising from the interaction of climate change, rapid urbanization, uneven governance capacity, and political-economic processes that shape vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Drawing on evidence from urban climate, adaptation, development, and climate justice literatures, we examine how escalating heat risks intersect with infrastructure deficits, debt burdens, limited access to climate finance, and unequal access to cooling resources across rapidly growing cities. We show that climate change mitigation and local action, including urban heat reduction and broader adaptation measures, perform distinct but complementary functions, and that local interventions alone cannot overcome the broader climatic and structural conditions that increasingly constrain their effectiveness and scalability. Urban heat risks are further amplified by profound inequalities in exposure, vulnerability, and access to adaptation resources, creating a widening mismatch between those facing the greatest heat burdens and those possessing the greatest capacity to respond. We, therefore, argue that effective urban heat governance requires moving beyond predominantly local and technocratic approaches toward integrated strategies that combine climate change mitigation, equitable climate finance, enhanced fiscal capacity, and multi-level governance. Reframing urban heat as a structural development challenge provides a more comprehensive framework for addressing climate justice, resilience, and long-term urban habitability under a warming climate.
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BibTeX
@article{khan2026urban,
title = {{Urban heat as a structural development challenge in rapidly growing cities}},
author = {Ansar Khan and Rafiq Hamdi and Tarek Ahmed and Dev Niyogi and Hashem Akbari and Mattheos Santamouris},
journal = {PLOS Climate},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pclm.0001010},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0001010},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Urban heat as a structural development challenge in rapidly growing cities
AU - Ansar Khan
AU - Rafiq Hamdi
AU - Tarek Ahmed
AU - Dev Niyogi
AU - Hashem Akbari
AU - Mattheos Santamouris
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
JO - PLOS Climate
DO - 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001010
UR - https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0001010
AB - Urban heat is increasingly emerging as a major constraint on sustainable development, particularly in rapidly growing cities of the Global South. Although urban heat is commonly addressed through local adaptation and urban heat reduction measures such as urban greening, cool and super cool roofs, and building retrofits or passive design, these interventions are increasingly implemented against a backdrop of accelerating planetary warming, fiscal constraints, and persistent socio-economic inequalities. This Essay argues that urban heat should be understood not merely as an environmental, technological, or urban planning challenge, but as a structural development problem arising from the interaction of climate change, rapid urbanization, uneven governance capacity, and political-economic processes that shape vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Drawing on evidence from urban climate, adaptation, development, and climate justice literatures, we examine how escalating heat risks intersect with infrastructure deficits, debt burdens, limited access to climate finance, and unequal access to cooling resources across rapidly growing cities. We show that climate change mitigation and local action, including urban heat reduction and broader adaptation measures, perform distinct but complementary functions, and that local interventions alone cannot overcome the broader climatic and structural conditions that increasingly constrain their effectiveness and scalability. Urban heat risks are further amplified by profound inequalities in exposure, vulnerability, and access to adaptation resources, creating a widening mismatch between those facing the greatest heat burdens and those possessing the greatest capacity to respond. We, therefore, argue that effective urban heat governance requires moving beyond predominantly local and technocratic approaches toward integrated strategies that combine climate change mitigation, equitable climate finance, enhanced fiscal capacity, and multi-level governance. Reframing urban heat as a structural development challenge provides a more comprehensive framework for addressing climate justice, resilience, and long-term urban habitability under a warming climate.
SN - 2767-3200
ER -