Solarpunk Urbanism

2426 readers

1 users here now

A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.

Checkout these related communities:

[email protected]

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Atlanta is embracing a cheap, effective way to beat urban heat: 'cool roofs' (grist.org)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Walk outside into 100-degree heat wearing a black shirt, and you’ll feel a whole lot hotter than if you were wearing white. Now think about your roof: If it’s also dark, it’s soaking up more of the sun’s energy and radiating that heat indoors. If it were a lighter color, it’d be like your home was wearing a giant white shirt all the time.

This is the idea behind the “cool roof.” Last month, Atlanta joined a growing number of American cities requiring that new roofs be more reflective. That significantly reduces temperatures not just in a building, but in the surrounding urban environment. “I really wanted to be able to approach climate change in the city of Atlanta with a diversity of tactics,” said City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari, who authored the bill, “because it’s far easier to change a local climate than it is a global one.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's called an attic. And yes, attics do help the floors below get less warm.

When you have an attic, you can go further by insulating the roof - this keeps the warm day air out, and during the night you can open windows to let the cool night air in. Historically roof insulation was done with thick layers of thatch, though light-weight synthetic alternatives are more common in modern construction. A well-insulated roof won't let through any appreciable amount of heat.

Then as things get hotter, build the roof taller, allow for natural air flow to dissipate the heat, and finally put the building on stilts so air can flow under it.

Retrofitting existing buildings to have space for good insulation is expensive, especially with the atrocities the US has been building in suburbs for the past 80 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yes, I have an attic. Through it runs my AC ducts which are insulated pretty poorly from what I can tell. And yes, additional insulation above the ceiling of the interior spaces. The attic itself is at deadly temperatures pretty much all summer long, because attic ventilation does not adequately clear the heat. This has been true of every house I've lived in since I was a kid. (Which is a lot of houses because I'm old)

It's difficult for me to imagine that permanently shading the roof and leaving an air gap above it would not improve things in addition to the presence of insulation and the attic itself, since it would lower temps in the attic. Regardless of the presence of insulation, reducing the delta between the attic temp and interior temp seems like it would be a win to me. My question, ultimately, is how much would a spaced layer above the roof impact this. To me, it feels like it would impact that delta a lot, but maybe not.