on leap day, the winter-scrubbed sand stood only a few feet wide on some areas of the beach. the lake sparkled under the late winter sun and snow mounded on the shoreline. norris guessed that lee street beach is about a third of its original size.

“the lakefront is the most important thing in evanston,” she said, sitting on a bench near the beach and holding her dog with a leash. “it’s already destroyed and i can’t imagine it’s going to get any better.”

norris predicts that lee street beach will be cramped this summer with the beach space so diminished.

“it’s going to be so crowded,” she said. “i don’t know where people are going to go.”

lake michigan and lake huron’s average lake level for february reached a record height this year, according to the u.s. army corps of engineers. the high level and pounding waves are eroding beaches in chicago and other cities hugging the great lakes.

some 768 miles southeast of evanston, the area surrounding beaufort, south carolina, is also in a battle with shrinking beachfronts as the atlantic ocean rises.

governments in beaufort and evanston are making plans to deal with the rising waters and other impacts of climate change. global warming due to fossil fuel emissions is making the ocean expand and melting ice sheets and glaciers are causing sea level rise, according to noaa. lake michigan’s water level will continue to rise and fall. but the maximum lake level will increase and the minimum lake level will decrease, according to kumar jensen, chief sustainability and resilience officer for the city of evanston.

the two cities are experiencing earth’s warming in different ways, as beaufort will have to deal with atlantic ocean hurricanes, while evanston will weather severe rainfall. both areas are considering how to combat beach erosion and planning to fix strained storm water systems.

fighting beach erosion or letting it be

evanston’s lee street beach is one of many in the chicago area that has decreased in size. evanston’s dog beach went under water a few years ago and has stayed there.

“even things like our dog beach and places along the chicago shoreline have not dealt well with just the lake levels being higher,” jensen said. “a lot of infrastructure is hidden or has been submerged.”

he said the lake level along the evanston shore has about a six-foot range, but the range will become more extreme in the future. lake levels reached record lows only a few years ago in 2013, suggesting unpredictable swings at a time when suburbs inland from the lake shore are running out of well water and would like to put a straw in the lake.

jensen said there is “not a ton” the city can do to expand the beaches, except if it were able to move them inward — an option the city is not considering. sidewalks and roads lie near evanston’s beaches, offering little room for expansion. evanston has added sand to the beaches in the past, he said, but not because of rising lake levels. the city has replaced sand that eroded, carried away by the currents to indiana and michigan — a process that occurs even when the water level is low. but the massive scale of submerging shore is something new.

lara biggs, the engineering and capital planning bureau chief for the city of evanston, told the city council in february that rock walls on beaches in evanston have lost height, as rocks slip into the lake. evanston was considering hiring a coastal engineering firm to assess the shoreline problems, she said. kimberly kull, division chief of emergency management and logistics for the evanston fire department, said at the city council meeting that it would take an estimated $5.78 million to fix the rock walls.

south carolina’s beaches are shrinking quickly as well. hunting island state park beach, 14 miles from beaufort, loses about 15 feet of sand a year on average because of erosion, according to park manager j.w. weatherford. he said wind and jet streams cause the erosion, along with storms. hunting island is a barrier island, which means that it sits next to the ocean and shields inland areas from storms.

the park adds more sand to its beach every 10 years, a process called beach renourishment. it costs the park $8 million each time. the new sand dunes prevent the island’s bathrooms and parking lots from flooding, according to weatherford. in mid-february, the sand was almost as tall as a person, as the park was raising the beach level.

weatherford said the park “renourishes” the beach so south carolina residents and tourists can still access it. beaches contribute to the local economy, as beach visitors stay at hotels, for example.

“the entire county is built off of the economy of the beaches,” weatherford said.

preparing stormwater systems for increased rain

it’s not only beaches that are seeing the effects of climate change. beaufort’s mossy oaks neighborhood occupies an 800-acre floodplain, said billy keyserling, the city’s mayor. many houses have sprung up in the neighborhood over the years, and the stormwater system cannot accommodate all of the buildings.

“they never anticipated that kind of number of houses,” keyserling said.

the city is experiencing higher tides and more frequent rain events, said rikki parker, the former south coast office director and legal analyst for the coastal conservation league. when there is both a high tide and rain in mossy oaks, water floods out of the neighborhood’s drainage ditches and ponds, and enters streets and people’s homes.

“mossy oaks … has suffered significantly over the past four years,” she said. “we have homes that have been repeat-flooded four or five times over the past four years.”

the city is conducting an approximately $6 million engineering project in mossy oaks, according to matt st. clair, public projects and facilities director for the city of beaufort. in the first phase of the project, the city cleaned out a canal — holding dirt, shopping carts and other items — so it could hold more water. st. clair said in the second phase, which will start this year, they will enlarge drainage pipes and repair roads that are affected by the pipe work. they will also construct five flood gates in the neighborhood.

the flood gates will separate catch basins, which are similar to ponds. before a high rain event, the city will lower the amount of water in the catch basins, st. clair said. they will also close the flood gates, which will prevent tidal water from entering the basins. only rainwater will enter the ponds.

“with the installation of the flood gates, we’ll be able to control … that tidal water trying to come in, as well as allow the water to come out,” st. clair explained.

jensen said evanston also faces more extreme storms in the future. the chicago area is confronting them already with swollen rivers flooding homes and roads. richard b. rood, a professor in the university of michigan’s department of climate and space sciences and engineering, said winter storms in illinois will likely be “much, much wetter,” and severe summer storms might bring “very extraordinary precipitation.”

rood said a larger percentage of yearly rain will occur during extreme rain events. climate change will warm the air, and warm air can store more water vapor. the ground will also warm and more of its water will evaporate. the increasing water vapor in the air will lead to rain — lots of rain.

hal sprague, president of citizens’ greener evanston, said flooding from rain is one of the main issues that evanston will have to face when building resilience to climate change. he said that some pipes in the city were built a century ago. evanston has both a combined sewer system, which holds both sewage and stormwater, and a newer, separate stormwater system.

during heavy rain events, sewage and rainwater used to backup into some residents’ basements, sprague said. in response, the city spent about $210 million updating its sewer system from 1991 to 2008, which included constructing a relief sewer system, according to the city of evanston. the system sends excess water to a network of artificial rivers called the deep tunnel, constructed beneath the entire chicago metropolitan area.

in 2018, evanston passed a climate action and resilience plan, and one element of the plan is to improve storm water systems. jensen said the city hired a consultant to conduct a stormwater utility analysis, in which they’ll learn where water ends up in the city during rain events and how much rain different stormwater systems can take. evanston can then determine which infrastructure needs to be upgraded, he said.

some cities and university campuses aim to stop using fossil fuels by mid-century, which would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and help prevent further sea level rise. sprague said it will be hard for evanston to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, however.

“if we’re going to have almost an impossible job here when we are trying our hardest to do it, and the other, you know, a million cities aren’t even trying, how are we going to solve climate change?” he asked.

he said the federal government could help solve climate change.

“if we were to have a federal government that would take it seriously, tell everybody that it’s a problem and start … changing the laws and giving incentives to people to make the behavioral change, it would go a lot faster,” he said.

maura turcotte contributed reporting to this article. 

this temperature difference can be very problematic when heat waves hit big cities for a number of reasons. for example, increased temperatures can increase energy consumption and increase the amount of air pollutants and greenhouse gases that are emitted. 

but these heat islands (uhis) also are problematic for individuals experiencing heat stress — which can cause heat injuries that sometimes lead to death — and can exacerbate global temperatures.

it’s a rising concern that’s being met with research on the subject — with the hope that the research can inform solutions and result in action. here are some solutions that can help reduce the impacts of the urban heat island effect.

increase the green 

shading

preserving and increasing the green space and canopy cover in urban areas can have a significant impact on how warm a city is. with increased canopy cover, the potential for more shade exists and consequently more cooling effects. most of the time this means planting more trees to increase tree canopy cover. but deciding where to plant trees in a city is crucial to the success of the trees and the cooling that they provide, as well as crucial to making sure that the urban canopy is distributed fairly.

aaron ramirez, an assistant professor at reed college, and hannah prather, a postdoc in ramirez’s lab, employ translational science when conducting their research, where they incorporate managers and other stakeholders into the process of research so that conversations can be started right away about how to act upon the research.

they are working with the city of portland to reduce the canopy disparities and make sure that less wealthy communities are not more adversely affected by the urban heat island effect. 

“our research interests in this area are focused on how uhis drive increased tree stress in urban forests,” ramirez said. “this is an important potential feedback loop whereby communities already underserved could experience higher rates of tree stress and mortality, which would strengthen the urban heat island effect.

“in our work, we are developing new methods for measuring tree stress in the urban landscape and working with managers to explore ways to prevent these dangerous feedbacks between increased tree mortality risk and human health risks.”

management decisions, informed by their research, could be anything from updating approved planting lists to including more drought-tolerant trees to changing how the city manages irrigation of city parks. this is especially important for portland and other cities that have some of the highest urban heat island effects around the country. portland, ranked no. 4 in the difference between rural and urban temperatures, is up to 19 degrees hotter in urban areas, while no. 1-ranked las vegas has a difference of up to 24 degrees. 

green roofs 

increasing the amount of green spaces in cities can happen in seemingly unlikely places. green roofs have the ability to help combat the urban heat island effect by providing shade, reducing rooftop temperatures, and increasing insulation in buildings, which reduces energy consumption. green roofs can even remove greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants from the air via sequestration and storage. 

solar 

the use of solar energy can have many of the same effects as increasing green spaces in cities in addition to acting as a mitigator of climate change and the heat island effect. in using solar panels, the need for non-renewable energy is reduced and fewer amounts of detrimental emissions are put into the atmosphere in the first place, which can help reduce temperatures by not contributing to the greenhouse effect.

depending on the type of solar array installed, it can provide shading and cooling similar to that of vegetation.

additionally, when installed on rooftops, solar panels are able to insulate buildings. in the summer months this can create a cooling effect during the day, while in the winter months it can help prevent heat loss at night. this means less cooling energy and costs in the summer and less heating energy and costs in the winter.

city management

vegetation is a great way to adapt to urban heat islands, but how we manage man-made materials is also very important in how we react to rising temperatures. 

cooling materials

the materials that buildings, cars, pavements and other surfaces are made of and what color they are affect how much heat is retained in those objects and how much heat stays in urban spaces.

lighter colors have high albedo — a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed — and trap less heat than darker colors. cool roofs and cool pavement can help lower temperatures, but there are more areas that can also be evaluated.

the heat island group at berkeley labs is looking at cars, pavements, roofs, and walls to evaluate what materials and colors can help create cooler cities. often this means lighter colors and more reflective materials will provide the most benefits.  

city planning 

the urban heat island effect is a complex network of many factors, such as those discussed above. researchers like vivek shandas at portland state university point out that there are other factors to consider as well in addition to the ones already discussed. designing our cities so that there are varied building heights, varied canopy cover, and varied street widths can immensely help reduce the heat island effect by increasing air flow that can then cool down the city environment. the hope is that research like shandas’ can help inform city planners and managers so they can adapt to the detrimental urban heat island effect. 

so: what do we do?

whether mitigating it in the first place or adapting to the urban heat island effect, there are many ways in which researchers have the potential to work with bureaucracy to bring about much needed change. this can be accomplished by increasing urban green spaces and cover, choosing better materials to build with, planning cities in better ways by being informed by research, and reducing our reliance on energy from fossil fuels.

these ideas — along with reducing our footprints in other ways including eating more plant-based foods, reducing fuel consumption for travel, using less single-use packaging, and interacting with our legislators to let them know how we feel about a changing climate — have the potential to reduce the urban heat island phenomena and make cities safer for residents in the years to come. the research has and will continue to guide us to solutions. now is the time to act upon it.

you can’t have a sustainable world without sustainable cities” -lisa benton-short.

upon entering dr. lisa benton-short’s office i am first drawn to the bookshelves lined with starbucks’ “city mugs” from upwards of 30 cities worldwide that she has collected during her travels as an urban geographer. they illustrate her background and her continued work in urban geography as she delves deeper into creating more sustainable urban spaces.

growing up in a rural community in montana, the thought of city life was always something we had to imagine. whenever we heard the word “city,” we would think of the stereotypical hustle and bustle of people surrounded by tall buildings mixed with unappealing scenes filled with traffic jams, smoggy horizons, and overflowing landfills. we often missed what benton-short points out: the green parks, diverse wildlife, and the sustainable transportation opportunities that cities have to offer.

benton-short has researched the dynamics of the urban environment from many angles, including planning and public space, urban sustainability, globalization, and immigration. i was able to sit down and talk to her about the emergence of more sustainable cities in the u.s. and around the world. she is still so passionate about her work, and seems to continue to love every aspect of it, even after years of research and work in the field.

she highlights the fact that 54% of the world’s population currently lives in cities with numbers trending higher for the future. by 2050 the world’s population is expected to exceed 9 billion people, with continuing trends an estimated 6.2 billion of those people will be living in urban areas – roughly the same number as the world’s total population in 2002.

one of the things she said that i found most interesting was that there is a demographic shift where young people are staying in cities longer, more people are choosing to raise a family in urban environments, and elderly people are making the move back to cities once their kids have settled down. benton-short attributes this shift to cultural influences such as tv shows like seinfeld and sex & the city that made living in an urban environment seem “cool” again.

i had always dreamed of living in a city when i got older, partially because of the glamorization of big cities in television and popular culture. when i was looking at college options, washington, dc seemed like a dream come true. but after spending three years living in dc, and getting the chance to spend some time in other large east coast cities, dc doesn’t seem nearly big enough!

when it comes to the “american dream” many people are abandoning the vision of white picket fences and two car garages in favor of city life, and i fit right into that. i imagine raising kids in a large city, or at least close to one. looking at all of the opportunities and experiences that are available in a large city makes me almost envious that i wasn’t raised closer to one. benton-short talked about how more and more children are being raised in cities and families are demanding services and amenities that not only translate into a higher quality of life for everybody but also make for more sustainable cities with expanded parks, outdoor recreational opportunities, and improved public transportation and urban walkability.

just traveling out to cities on the west coast, i can see the walkability is distinctly different, and the cities have much less public transportation, but many of these cities still have plans to become more sustainable. many communities already have sustainability plans looking toward the future; austin and san francisco plan to be carbon neutral by 2020, new york city is requiring buildings to use less energy and waives city sales tax on efficient vehicles, and portland has already installed over 200 miles of designated bike lanes.

there is no doubt the world of our future will be urban. the challenge confronting us today is whether we can make that world an efficient and sustainable one. 

when i moved to washington, dc for school, i was the hillbilly from georgia. everyone assumed was going to be lost living in “the big city.” two important things to note, though: i am not a hillbilly by any means, nor is d.c. a “big” city.

the population of the nation’s capitol is close to 650,000 residents – tiny in comparison to some of the world’s megacities – though its daytime population swells to more than 1 million, thanks to the area’s commuting workers according to a u.s. census report. this population change between day and night is second only to new york. and guess what’s third on that list? fulton county, ga., home to atlanta – and me.

washington does have some attributes that atlanta does not. these features make it feel like a megacity to me: amazing public transportation, huge urban parks and an extremely dense population. sure, the buildings are not as tall and the population is not as large as atlanta’s, but washington does have a few of the qualities that make up some of the megacities around the world.

i recently sat down and interviewed carlos cubillos, a principal architect at gensler architecture, based in san francisco. gensler is one of the largest architecture firms in the world, and cubillos’ experience in urban design and planning has taken him to six continents. his expertise and his experience are vast, and his passion for his work was evident from the second i spoke with him.

as more and more people are moving to urban areas, downtowns are getting taller and cities are getting denser. cubillos’ explanation of how cities are changing gave me new perspective when i look at the development and redesign i am witnessing in atlanta and d.c.

in atlanta, i have seen the skyline drastically change in the past three years. there are two new urban parks under construction by my home, and a large amount of redevelopment has taken place in attempt to make the city more walkable, and therefore more “liveable.”

instead of large strip malls, new entire developments with upscale shopping, dining, office space, residential and entertainment venues are popping up. developments like buckhead one, which opened in november 2014, are a prime example of creating city centers that have everything concentrated in one place.

cubillos said that as we design or redesign city spaces, the trend is to plan around or add more open spaces. “open space is the only place where race, gender or class does not matter,” he said. “we are all equal in these spaces.”

thinking about the national mall, or even the park across the street from my apartment in d.c, i took his point to heart. the families on the playground, the politicians meeting and the homeless man who enjoys a nap on the bench, are all equal for the time being in this sole place in the city.

as my hometown of atlanta continues to grow, i am excited to look at the new construction from cubillos’ perspective. one project he mentioned, the king abdullah city for atomic and renewable energy (k.a.care) in riyadh, saudi arabia, aims to serve as the model for resource-efficient desert cities, as well as become a center for research and innovation in sustainable energy production. cubillos is hopeful that the ideas stemming from the design and implementation of smart cities like k.a.care can be adapted to meet our needs in the united states.

rise of the megacities

megacities can be some of the most sustainable places to live, but how did we get to an era of packed populations and sprawling towers? take a look: