Boston — For Arwa Ait-Chaib and her mother, Wafa El Hidar, summertime in Chelsea, Massachusetts, means trying to beat the heat.
“There are always some days that I feel like we live in the middle of the Sahara desert,” Ait-Chaib told CBS News.
Their Chelsea neighborhood, located just across the river from Boston, offers little shade.
“We had no trees over here at all,” El Hidar said.
Chelsea is plagued by what is known as the Urban Heat Island effect, where dense development and a lack of green space can cause some neighborhoods to bake.
“I just can’t stand it,” Ait-Chaib said. “It’s like, I feel sticky. It’s humid out, and if you go out the sun immediately burns your skin.”
Research from the nonprofit Climate Central shows peak temperatures in such urban areas can be 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than greener ones.
“We’re basically an island of hot stuff,” Bianca Bowman, a climate justice manager with GreenRoots, a local Boston environmental group, said of Chelsea.
GreenRoots is experimenting with cooling solutions on a single block in Chelsea that GreenRoots calls the “cool block.”
“We looked at those spots and said, ‘OK, where can we throw as many solutions as possible to cool those areas down?’” Bowman said.
In what it calls an “urban laboratory,” GreenRoots has planted more than 100 trees on the block, resurfaced the street in lighter colors to reflect heat, and painted nearby rooftops white. GreenRoots is partnering with the city of Chelsea on the project, which is receiving a combination of funding from the state and philanthropic foundations.
“So when you paint a rooftop white, it’s actually reflecting heat instead of absorbing heat,” Bowman said.
Fixes like these could help save lives as climate change makes heat waves worse. Climate Central research has found that 88% of 247 major U.S. cities now have more extremely hot summer days than they did 55 years ago. Climate Central defines an extremely hot summer day as one that has a maximum temperature hotter than 95% of all summer days between 1970 and 2024.
On Tuesday, Boston recorded a high of 102 degrees, the hottest June day in the city since 1872, according to the National Weather Service.
Boston University researchers are working with Chelsea residents this summer to study the problem even further. Some families are wearing small sensors to track heat exposure.
Their research shows parks, trees and green space can reduce peak urban temperatures by two to nine degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, finding space in big, crowded cities is not always easy, so those that design such spaces have to make the most of what they have.
A project is underway to replace pavement behind Ait-Chaib’s Chelsea home with a park that is being built by the city of Chelsea, but inspired by the “Cool Blocks” initiative. She says it feels like the neighborhood is improving.
Chris Reed, founder of the landscape architecture studio Stoss Landscape Urbanism, designed Boston’s groundbreaking Urban Forest Plan, first launched by the city in 2022. The plan established the city’s first urban forester position and urban forestry department. It also put in place procedures for preserving and extending the city’s tree canopy.
Under the plan, on one particular strip of land, about 400 trees were planted on just a single acre, Reed explains.
“So, you don’t need acres and acres and acres of land,” Reed told CBS News. “These kinds of places are in cities everywhere and can be transformed one by one.”
This story was produced in partnership with Climate Central.
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