The cool city
Heat is built into the city, into the asphalt, the stone and the thin shade. This course teaches your professionals how to design cooler public space, from diagnosis to policy.
Heat is no longer an incident
A city warms up differently from the countryside. Stone and asphalt hold heat, green and water are missing, and at night it barely cools down. The gap between the surface temperature and what people truly feel is wide, and it is that feeling that decides whether a street stays liveable. Heat also does not touch everyone equally, and so it becomes a question of health and equity too.
Eleven lessons in three phases
You work from diagnosis to choice to anchoring. Along the way a bridge from place to process, and a scenario final assessment where you diagnose a neighbourhood, choose interventions and anchor them.
Reading the place
1. How a city heats up
2. Reading the place, heat and equity mapping
3. What you no longer notice
The right intervention
4. The three axes of cooling
5. Without and with little technology
6. Green and water that works
7. From around the world, and what is coming
From place to policy
8. New build and area development
9. Existing build and maintenance
10. Bringing residents along in the space
11. Bringing others along in the organisation
Trees do most of the work
A mature tree gives shade that feels 2 to 8 degrees cooler, and every ten percent of extra canopy cover saves about a third of a degree in the air. Trees cool where people walk, and that is where it counts. You learn to choose species that stand up to the city, and to give them the soil they need.
Cool roofs and green facades
A green or light roof lowers the roof surface by ten to seventeen degrees. Green facades and climbing plants cool the wall and the air beside it. You learn where these interventions truly help and where they mostly look good, so your budget goes to the effect.
Water and airflow, seen honestly
Water and wind cool, but not always. A pond that takes up heat during the day and gives it off again at night does not cool the night. You learn when water works, how you keep airflow in a street, and how you let the soil breathe again through de-paving and a sponge city.
Old wisdom, new city
Long before air conditioning, people were already cooling their cities. Wind catchers, qanats, toldos and mashrabiya, arcades and high albedo. You learn what of that works in a European street, and where the albedo trap sits, because a white wall that bounces the heat onto the pavement does not help the pedestrian.
From Medellin to the sponge city
The green corridors of Medellin brought the measured temperature down by about two degrees. Barcelona builds superblocks, China builds sponge cities, and on the facade grows the forest of Bosco Verticale. You learn what you take home from this, and what only works in a different climate.
What truly cools, and what is oversold
Not every green measure cools the air, and that honesty is the heart of the course.
You learn the difference between surface and perceived temperature, why the story of the cooling termite mound is a myth, and how you give every measure an honest label: traditional, measured, proven, emerging or disputed. That way you choose on evidence, not on pretty pictures.
Instruments you use on Monday
This course does not leave you with knowledge alone. You get practical instruments you put to use in your own work straight away.
Four conversation checklists
For the green-space manager, the designer, the area developer and the leadership. So you ask the right question in every conversation.
Decision aid for measures
Weigh interventions on effect, cost and maturity, from traditional to proven and emerging.
Brief and tender generator
Translate cooling into hard requirements in your project brief and your tender.
Cooling that lasts
A cool street starts with the design and holds up in maintenance. You learn the cooling ladder for new build and the co-benefit moments with sewer, road and green in the existing city. You see how local overheating standards and national climate-adaptation programmes support your work, and how the health and equity map is often your strongest argument at the leadership table.
Frequently asked questions
Who is this course for?
How long does the course take?
Do I also get practical tools?
Do the cooling measures you name truly work?
Does the course run in our own LMS?
Making heat a standing question
This is how heat becomes a standing question in your work.
Do you want to run the course in your own local government, or see a trial module first? Book an introduction and we will show you.