Ever noticed the country can feel a little cooler than the city?  Well, you’re right.

“Warming and extreme heat events due to urbanization and increased energy consumption are simulated to be as large as the impact of doubled CO2 in some regions, and climate change increases the disparity in extreme hot nights between rural and urban areas.”

That’s the takeaway from an abstract of a new study published by researchers at the United Kingdom’s Met Office Hadley Centre in Geophysical Research Letters.

We’ve known about the urban “heat island” effect for a while: the sun heats up a city’s increased amount of paved and built surfaces, and these retain and emit heat.  Also responsible is the reduced amount of vegetation and permeable surfaces (like trees and soil), which can help cool a landscape.  The Met scientists ran some simulations and found that the increasing area and density of cities, coupled with a warming climate, could make this worse – especially at night.  That’s in part because all those people will be using more energy and releasing more carbon dioxide into the air.

So, should we all move to the country?  Not necessarily.  I find this particular study presents a kind of dilemma for folks who’d like to live with the smallest footprint possible.  Some say city living is the most environmentally friendly, because if you live where you work, you’ll drive less.  And heating and cooling an apartment or small house in a city is usually cheaper – and more efficient – than cooling a big country house.  But urban sprawl, these researchers find, could worsen the temperature disparity between urban and rural areas.  What to do?

It seems to me the answer can be found in how cities develop and are built.  Planning development, to include green infrastructure such as permeable pavement, trees, green roofs, and more can help.  Designing walkable communities, and investing in public transportation to reduce driving, can help.  Building energy efficient buildings or retrofitting what’s already there, as well as reducing our energy use in every way possible, could also help.

So, what do you think? Country, city, or a better design of each?

- by Kristin Espeland Gourlay