The initiative covers roads, playgrounds, and parking lots, and it has already cooled the surface by 10 to 12 degrees.
It’s no secret by now that cities run hotter than the countryside: Fewer trees mean less shade, and concentrated human activity generates heat, which hard surfaces like pavement and parking lots absorb. To combat the so-called urban heat island effect, some cities have been retrofitting public buildings into climate shelters, while others have been planting thousands of trees. One Los Angeles neighborhood is turning to solar-reflective paint.
The team behind the GAF Cool Community Project has just finished painting a whopping 1 million square feet of roads, playgrounds, and parking lots in Pacoima. The paint comes with special additives that reflect infrared light, meaning painted pavement ends up absorbing less heat. Most of the surfaces have been painted a light shade of gray, but a local artist was commissioned to design a series of colorful murals on a basketball court, a school playground, and a parking lot.
The initiative comes on the heels of a series of dangerous heat waves in the U.S. affecting more than 16 million Americans. Painting streets may not be the silver bullet that fixes the urban heat island effect, but in Pacoima, it has already cooled the surface by about 10 to 12 degrees, highlighting the potential for a simple yet effective upgrade. The project will now investigate how much the cooler surfaces will bring the neighborhood temperature down as a whole.
It’s not the first time that cities have turned to paint to reduce heat (though typically, that paint is white, like in New York City, where more than 10 million square feet of rooftops have been painted in the past 10 years).