May 25, 2023 at 5:00 amPeople wait for a bus in temperatures approaching 100 degrees at South Kedzie Avenue and West Cermak Road in the Little Village neighborhood in June 2022.
The local aphorism that it’s “cooler by the lake” can’t fully explain these disparities. Certain inland neighborhoods, such as Ukrainian Village and Logan Square, have tended to be cooler than some communities closer to Lake Michigan, including East Pilsen and Chinatown. Urban planning decisions, such as industrial zoning, play a large role in creating and sustaining cities’ hotter areas, climate experts note.
Nestor Flores is the director of behavioral health initiatives at Pilsen Wellness Center. A green roof tops the group’s flagship building, located among some of Chicago’s hottest average surface temperatures.
The havoc wreaked by more recent heat disasters, such as last year’s record-breaking temperatures in the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest, serves as a reminder that the threat is increasing. In Chicago, scientists say mounting days of extreme heat will mark life across the city for at least the next 30 years.
The federal government’s former discriminatory practice of redlining, which rated areas as “hazardous” based largely on the number of Black and immigrant residents who lived there, has been linked to hotter temperatures in cities across the country. warehouses and truck and train terminals in industrial corridors bring constant freight traffic to nearby communities.
As chair of environmental justice at Pilsen’s St. Paul Catholic Church, Mary Gonzalez has been working with advocates from 15 other groups to pressure the city and state to deny a permit that would allow a controversial metal shredding and processing company, Sims Metal Management, to restart its operations in Pilsen.
Schwab, retired from a job with the American Planning Association, cautioned residents who live where it’s cooler not to trivialize the temperature differences in Chicago’s hotter areas. “There’s a humanitarian aspect to this that I think escapes a lot of people’s attention,” he said. Juan Antonio Espinosa, who worked as a street vendor last summer, stands with his food cart on West 47th Street in the Brighton Park neighborhood in June 2022.