Urban Heat Implications from Parking, Roads, and Cars: a Case Study of Metro Phoenix

Impacts of the San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place during the COVID-19 pandemic on urban heat fluxes

“…Based on in situ surface temperature measurements made in May of 2020, and consistent with the findings of Hoehne et al (2020) , it was hypothesized that the densely clustered presence in 2017, 2018, and 2019 of highly reflective vehicles would have notably cooled most dark asphalt-covered impervious surfaces, such as wide roadways and large open-air parking lots, and absence of most of these vehicles during the 2020 SiP period would have raised the ST of those same impervious surface features. Instead, it was necessary to reject this hypothesis that changes during the COVID-19 SiP period in the heat flux from parking lots, highways, and large industrial/commercial building rooftops could be attributed mainly to variations in the surface reflective properties in these different classes of non-vegetated urban features.…”

“…It has been reported that impervious surfaces can have a measurable warming effect on urban temperature conditions ( Xiao et al, 2007 ; Weng, 2012 ). In a study of Phoenix Arizona, Hoehne et al (2020) found that sensible heat flux from urban surfaces was comprised of 67% from roadways, 29% from parking lots, and 3.9% vehicles, and that concrete and asphalt pavements emit 15% and 37% more sensible heat compared to the bare ground, respectively. However, the influence of the impervious composition and geography on surface heating and cooling has rarely been quantified across large metropolitan areas ( Nie and Xu, 2015 ).…”

Parking by the bay: The supply and implications of parking infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area

“…Future work could focus on the linkages between parking supply and demand. This could include how parking supply has changed over time and how auto ownership and registrations have followed (Chester et al, 2015;Hoehne et al, 2019), influences vehicle travel, impacts the environment, and contributes to urban heat island (Hoehne et al, 2020), and/or where particular policies (such as allowances for converting home garages to secondary dwelling units to increasing housing supply) are more likely to be impactful. Related, the results provide critical information for rethinking housing policies writ large, for example, where off-street parking requirements constrain the number of units that can be built.…”

“…For regions focused on developing broad parking policies or concerned about the spatial impacts of parking, the third approach yields rich and targeted information. For example, a parking space inventory for Los Angeles County was used to analyze car-sharing behavior (Brown, 2019;Chester et al, 2015), and an inventory for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area shows where the infrastructure contributes to the urban heat island effect (Hoehne et al, 2019(Hoehne et al, , 2020. Where significant changes to parking policy are being considered, detailed estimates of parking inventories are needed.…”

Evidence-based Guidance on Reflective Pavement for Urban Heat Mitigation: A Case Study in Phoenix, Arizona

“…Paved surfaces have high thermal storage capacities and sensible heat fluxes 22 , two major components responsible for the additional urban heat and thus the higher overall heat load.…”