Here’s how Canadian cities can prepare for hotter summers, according to urban planners

CTV’s Kamil Karamali reports on record-breaking temperatures sweeping Ontario and Quebec, and how cities can adapt to a hotter future.

With two heat waves hitting parts of Ontario and Quebec less than two weeks apart, urban planners and ecologists are stressing the need for Canadian municipalities to transform their heated urban sprawls into “cooler cities.”

“We’re seeing these heat waves coming sooner, they’re lasting longer, they’re more intense and there are more of them — they’re more frequent because of the human effect, because human beings are creating more of this heat,” said Environment and Climate Change Canada Emeritus Associate David Phillips in an interview with CTV News Channel on Saturday.

“Cities are starting to realize you’re not necessarily vulnerable to it, you can do something about it — you can make your cities more weather-proof and weather-resistant to these heat waves,” he added. “It just takes some planning and architecture and things like this.”

There are a number of changes Canadian cities need to implement to make urban centres cooler, according to Iain Stewart, a researcher and lecturer in urban climatology and climate-sensitive urban design at the University of British Columbia.

“First of all, it’s important we don’t build the edges of our cities right up to the waterfronts or right up to the rural environments, because those are source areas of relatively fresh and clean air — and they can be blocked by tall buildings standing side by side and creating a barrier to the airflow,” said Stewart.

Stewart adds that once natural air can make its way into the city, structures need to be built in a way that allows for corridors and ventilation pathways.

“That can be created through linear parks and low-rise settlements that can allow air to move through unobstructed.”

Luna Khirfan, an associate professor of urban planning at the University of Waterloo, says at the top of her list for what cities should implement immediately to create cooler urban centres are nature-based solutions.

“For example, if we have an existing water body, it brings coolness to the surrounding areas — what we can do is increase the area and shape of water bodies and that would alleviate some of the heat,” said Khirfan. “And if we have an urban park, we can increase the quantity or total area of green space as opposed to hard surfaces within that park and the surrounding areas.”

She said that would also allow for more tree canopy to create shade — and fewer reflective or concrete surfaces that absorb heat.

Khirfan adds many cities are creating what she calls “band-aid solutions” rather than implementing a cohesive approach that incorporates the entire city in creating a cooler environment.

“The airflow, the shade, the material [that buildings are made from] — all of them work in tandem,” she said. “This is the thing with Canadian cities: we adopt one solution and it’s patchwork, rather than thinking of a collection or a bouquet of solutions that should go hand in hand to get the desired results.”

In 2021, a heat dome in B.C. resulted in the death of 619 people — and a subsequent coroner’s report suggested long-term mitigation strategies, including incorporating cooling requirements in building codes for new construction.

“I do think B.C., and Vancouver in particular, are moving in the right direction and they’ve implemented many good strategies to help with extreme heat. Some of those are design-related, including adding more trees and changing the colours for different surface facets and so on,” said Stewart.

But the changes depend on each individual city’s layout — with no “one-size-fits-all” approach, according to James Voogt, a professor of geography and environment at Western University.

“You can’t necessarily apply the same solutions everywhere. The best solutions in one city aren’t necessarily the same everywhere else,” said Voogt in a Zoom interview with CTV News on Saturday. “I think the solutions also need to expand across the range of scale, so you want to think about how you design buildings, how buildings should be regulated in terms of how they’re built, how they’re insulated, how they deal with heat.”

Khirfan believes many cities across the country are already well behind an adequate timeline — and may not be keeping up with the pace at which the climate is changing.

“It should’ve happened yesterday. The number of people who die from urban heat is by far the most dangerous and concerning number, and we need to deal with that,” said Khirfan.

“If we are bold, we can do it in a decade. If we are not, it might drag on for 30 to 50 years until things get worse and worse and it becomes inevitable that we have to take action.”