Changing pavements makes cities cooler

I am Ashlynn

I was reading the topic about how painting buildings white reduces the temperature and then I wanted to find out about the roads and pavements as well, so I googled and found this: Research paper

It is about changing the albedo of a surface, which is the amount of light it absorbs and that affects the amount of heat it absorbs and stores and how much it heats the air, and it can make a big change. You do need to plan where to change it carefully though, otherwise it just reflects more heat into buildings around and they use more energy for cooling.

Changing some of the surfaces in US cities, because the research is from the US - MIT, can lower the temperature by 2.5 - 2.7 degrees.

It's amazing how simple some environment solutions can be, like just changing the colour of walls and roads.

Ash

Makes sense I guess. We've always been taught that the colour black and a few other darker colours are awful in the heat because it just attracts heat. Would be weird to see lighter coloured pavements though lol

Vilte

I get two thoughts about this straight away.

First, won't white or light roads just look incredibly dirty within days of being installed and then not be so good at reflecting the heat anyway.

Second, aren't roads black because they are made with asphalt, and that is the color of it.

I'm quite sure that asphalt is made of oil, so maybe that is a bigger environment problem than the temperature it creates?

Julie Brooks-Girskiene

I never thought about the reflection pay cut that makes sense, if the roads reflect more heat on to windows then you need to cool down the inside of the buildings more.

Piri

There are some ideas about the roads like to use recycled plastic, as well as @Vilte mentioned usually it is used the products of oil and it is not environment friendly and not human wellbeing friendly.

There are some factors to consider like how efficient roads should be like making them quickly, lasting long, environment friendly.

It was the idea some years ago about solar roads like they would make electricity and would be good to make heat during the winter time, but actually now they say it was failure as it is super expensive, the led lights hard to see during the day ect. But solar parking areas are effective. Like in USA you have lots of open roof parkings for example.

Vilte

Piri It was the idea some years ago about solar roads like they would make electricity

I think I read a while ago about some idea to make the wind from passing cars generate power from some kind of turbines in the center of the road?

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