With certain Philadelphia neighborhoods’ surface temperatures reaching more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than in greener, the City has launched a potential solution, writes Sophia Schmidt for WHYY.
The Philadelphia Office of Sustainability recently started test out a reflective pavement in Hunting Park to help keep city streets cooler.
This is due to the fact that part of the problem is that concrete and asphalt pavement contribute to the urban heat island effect by the absorption of the sun’s heat. Conventional paved surfaces trap heat.
“Pavements, typically, they cover a large surface area in urban cities,” Kamil Kaloush, a professor of pavement engineering at Arizona State University who has studied cool pavements, said. “Whether these are roads, highways, parking lots … they have a tendency to absorb heat during the day and re-emit this back to the atmosphere at nighttime.”
In contrast, cool pavements are designed to reflect more of the sun’s energy rather than absorbing it.
Philadelphia’s new cool pavement pilot in Hunting Park is a coating called CoolSeal.
Andrew Dodd, placed-based heat resilience program manager at the Office of Sustainability, said a success pilot would mean the CoolSeal pavement can be used long-term to help the office’s citywide efforts toward heat resilience.
Read more about the City’s newest effort to address hot pavements at WHYY.
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