Narrowing urban heat disparities alongside faster greening in low-income neighborhoods across cities in the United States
Abstract
Urban heat disproportionately burdens socioeconomically vulnerable communities, yet how these disparities change over time remains poorly understood. Here we show that heat disparities between low- and high-income neighborhoods generally narrowed across 55 major cities in the United States from 1986 to 2020, although substantial inequities persisted. This narrowing coincided with faster environmental improvements in disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly greater increases in greenness. Disparity trajectories varied across climate zones, with temperate and cold cities showing narrowing heat gaps, whereas arid cities more often showed persistent or widening gaps. At the city level, environmental disparities followed diverse pathways depending on changes in both overall environmental conditions and the distribution of change between income groups. Changes in greenness disparities were more strongly associated with changes in heat disparities than were changes in cooling efficiency. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of urban environmental inequality and the importance of equitable greening in urban climate adaptation.
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BibTeX
@article{cao2026narrowing,
title = {{Narrowing urban heat disparities alongside faster greening in low-income neighborhoods across cities in the United States}},
author = {Jie Cao and Weiqi Zhou and Timon McPhearson and Jing Wang and Haoran Hou and Jing Liu},
journal = {Nature Communications},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-78468-y},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-78468-y},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Narrowing urban heat disparities alongside faster greening in low-income neighborhoods across cities in the United States
AU - Jie Cao
AU - Weiqi Zhou
AU - Timon McPhearson
AU - Jing Wang
AU - Haoran Hou
AU - Jing Liu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
JO - Nature Communications
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-78468-y
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-78468-y
AB - Urban heat disproportionately burdens socioeconomically vulnerable communities, yet how these disparities change over time remains poorly understood. Here we show that heat disparities between low- and high-income neighborhoods generally narrowed across 55 major cities in the United States from 1986 to 2020, although substantial inequities persisted. This narrowing coincided with faster environmental improvements in disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly greater increases in greenness. Disparity trajectories varied across climate zones, with temperate and cold cities showing narrowing heat gaps, whereas arid cities more often showed persistent or widening gaps. At the city level, environmental disparities followed diverse pathways depending on changes in both overall environmental conditions and the distribution of change between income groups. Changes in greenness disparities were more strongly associated with changes in heat disparities than were changes in cooling efficiency. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of urban environmental inequality and the importance of equitable greening in urban climate adaptation.
SN - 2041-1723
ER -