Sara Meerow

New essay with @anoukfransen.bsky.social on the workshop we organized last spring in Detroit.

Planning Discovery Team Group Photo

We hosted the SW-IFL All Hands Meeting at the @uarizona.bsky.social with over 65 researchers, students, and stakeholders from across the state yesterday, and finally had a chance to get a group photo of our current Planning Discovery research team, led by @sarameerow.bsky.social and me!

Urban Resilience: Disruptive Discourse or More of the Same for Cities? Urban resilience discourse has become increasingly pervasive over the last decade, with numerous studies, policy initiatives, and plans focusing on resilient cities. Whether this urban resilience agen...

Over the years I've researched how #urban #resilience is conceptualized by different academic disciplines, practitioners, & the public. I synthesized my thinking on the concept in a book chapter based on a talk at the 2022 Association for Literary Urban Studies Conference: doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Cover of Too hot to handle: Assessing practitioner climate service needs to advance heat resilience article in Climate Services journal

New article on #heat governance & climate services. We interviewed and surveyed heat practitioners from across the US about their challenges and decision-support needs: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

picture of journal article cover for Planning for heat resilience in increasingly vulnerable cities: A case study of Vienna, Austria

picture of journal article cover: Planning to mitigate heat in vulnerable neighborhoods: Applyingthe Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ for Heat in twoBoston neighborhoods

It's hot almost everywhere & our team has 2 new studies of #heat #planning both led by former master's students: One on #Vienna, Austria and the other looking at 2 neighborhoods in #Boston:
Vienna: authors.elsevier.com/a/1la4Z7sfVZ...

Boston: doi.org/10.1080/0735...

Some good news today: 2 of the geography PhD students in my lab successfully defended their dissertations! Congrats to new Drs. Philip Gilbertson and Alex Cliff for your persistence and important work on climate resilience!

I was reflecting on the heatwave that impacted much of the U.S. this week, my Op-Ed from 2021 with @sarameerow.bsky.social is just as relevant today as it was then: "The reality is that all cities, regardless of size or location, need to plan for heat resilience now." news.trust.org/item/...

An amazing way to kick off my month at NCAR in Boulder this summer!

planning framework for flood-heat hazard synergies and tradeoffs

New paper led by @saidasobhani.bsky.social proposing a planning framework for navigating synergies and trade-offs between heat and flood resilience & applying it to evaluate Baltimore, MD's network of plans. Part of our team's new work on multihazard resilience authors.elsevier.com/c/1lIRw7t2zZ...

NEW JUA #ARTICLE: Heat mitigation and management in the City of Phoenix, Arizona: A case study of America’s hottest large city www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @bhanlonurban.bsky.social

Cities are adapting to increasingly long, frequent, and intense heat waves and their unequally distributed effects. PSC alum @sarameerow.bsky.social et al report on Phoenix, AZ, a city that epitomizes these challenges and innovations needed to address them. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Heat mitigation and management in the City of Phoenix, Arizona: A case study of America’s hottest large city The increasing frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves due to climate change have escalated the occurrence of extreme heat risks, raising significant concerns in many cities. The unequal d...

The second, led by @shaylynntrego.bsky.social‬, is a case study of heat governance in Phoenix, Arizona, and discusses the nation's first publicly funded office of heat mitigation and response and related efforts to address extreme heat. doi.org/10.1080/0735...

A comparison of plan integration for flood and heat resilience: A case study of Baltimore, Maryland Due to the deadly and costly impacts of flooding, extreme heat, and limited resources for resilience-building efforts, cities need win-win strategies …

The first, led by @saidasobhani.bsky.social‬, compares plan integration for extreme heat and flooding in Baltimore, Maryland, and explores policy co-benefits, trade-offs, and the possibility for maladaptation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two new heat resilience papers from our research team this week! @sarameerow.bsky.social #heatresilience #extremeheat

Cover of paper: Heat mitigation and management in the City of Phoenix, Arizona

As summer heats up and communities prepare, people often want to know what Phoenix, America's hottest large city, is doing to mitigate & manage heat. PhD student @shaylynntrego.bsky.social led this case study now published in the Journal of Urban Affairs: doi.org/10.1080/0735...
@laddkeith.com

Planning for Urban Heat Resilience Planners seeking to increase their communities’ urban heat resilience can equitably prepare for and adapt to both chronic and acute heat risk through heat mitigation and management strategies.

AZ's official Heat Awareness week has five themes and today is Take Action. @laddkeith.com and @sarameerow.bsky.social wrote Planning for Urban Heat Resilience, a report providing holistic guidance to help increase urban heat resilience equitably in communities across the U.S. tinyurl.com/plan-heat

Congrats!

FEMA Is Eliminating Hazard Mitigation Programs, Leaving Americans Nationwide at Risk as Disasters Worsen Cancelling the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and funding for future Flood Mitigation Assistance grants would end most federal funding for predisaster hazard mitigation, eve...

What does FEMA’s retreat from hazard mitigation programs mean for states and communities? @wcurrangroome.bsky.social, @sara-mctarnaghan.bsky.social and I break down the impacts of the administration’s decisions, by state and congressional district: www.urban.org/urban-wire/f...

New #OpenAccess publication from our team led by @saidasobhani.bsky.social: Systematic lit review of methods for spatial planning of green infrastructure for #stormwater & #heat mitigation reveals siloed literatures & few multifunctional approaches #GreenInfrastructure #NBS doi.org/10.1016/j.uf...

Kicking off 4 days of #urban #greening curated track sessions at #AAG2025 in Huntington Place rm 320. Join us #UrbanForestry, #GreenInfrastructure, #NatureBasedSolution folks!

Our special issue on #Green #Infrastructure Futures is now complete in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...
Including our editorial: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
@ianmell.bsky.social @mitchzuckerman.bsky.social @oh-the-urbanity.bsky.social & Sarah Clement

Requirements for US climate change planning are now almost certainly going to have to come from state governments. Our research on California suggests that even a flexible, unfunded, & untracked mandate improves planning
doi.org/10.1080/0194...
50 free downloads: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IHS3P...

Check out our new paper on #flood #risk and #resilience in Houston

Amidst the chaos, the fantastic CAP LTER program at ASU is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Urban Social-Ecological Systems: apply.interfolio.com/163268

Cities@Tufts Colloquium Shareable and Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning co-present this ongoing free lecture series hosted by professor Shareable and Tufts University co-present Citie...

Check out our Cities@Tufts Podcasts and Videos! Hear @lorettaclees.bsky.social @jenniecstephens.bsky.social @norton.bsky.social @drnoelhealy.bsky.social @tamikabutler.bsky.social @sarameerow.bsky.social @ianguelovski.bsky.social @kateraworth.bsky.social and more!

www.shareable.net/cities-tufts/

Do you work on #green #infrastructure or #urban #forestry #planning for a local government in the United States? If so I would greatly appreciate if you could complete this 10-minute survey for a research project I'm leading: asu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

A little over a week left to apply to be part of the first cohort of the Center for Heat Resilient Communities!

As the end of my sabbatical fellowship in Munich rapidly approaches, I was able to squeeze in a quick first visit to the beautiful Sciences Po and participate in their inspiring Nature in the City conference! Lots of good discussions about #cities and #naturebasedsolutions

Please share this opportunity with local governments and partnered organizations across the US: The application to join the 1st cohort of our Center for Heat Resilient Communities is open!

2023 was the hottest in 2,000 years, but while cities worldwide face growing heat risks, most lack comprehensive and coordinated efforts to address hazards. A commentary w/ recommendations for emerging urban heat governance systems by @laddkeith.bsky.social and UM-PSC alum @sarameerow.bsky.social: