Event Recap: Value of Shade Webinar
June 23, 2026
On Monday, May 11th, A Better City’s Extreme Heat Working Group co-hosted a “Value of Shade” webinar with the Community Adaptations to City Heat (CATCH) project, to provide an update on what the City of Boston is doing to enhance permanent, semi-permanent, and pop-up shade structures across heat island neighborhoods, as well as to share shade monitoring results from the B-COOL team’s summer 2025 shade monitoring.
Office of Climate Resilience Update: Shade Initiatives in Boston
As Zoë Davis shared, shade is one of the most effective ways to enhance personal cooling, and to contribute to an overall cooler built environment. Strategies to increase shade on municipal and other sites across the city include:
- Pop-up misting tents: These were initially developed during COVID-19 quarantine, when we were in a moment of being able to safely gather outside but not inside. The City helped to provide pop-up misting tents to community-based organizations, as well as for emergency response efforts via the Office of Emergency Management.
- Outdoor Cooling Guide: This resource is for anyone, especially organizations and provides useful information about how you can have a tent, get a perforated hose from Lowe’s, etc. The resource is designed to be accessible, not fancy.
- Outdoor Cool Spaces: These spaces serve as outdoor living rooms on municipal sites like libraries , community centers, and Boston Center for Youth and Families locations. Many of these locations also serve as cooling centers. Having spaces for people to work remotely, do homework, run around and play, sit in the shade, and cool off in the mist serve as transitional interventions, with the goal that these elements are built into future capital improvements or future operational improvements.
- Successful outdoor cool spaces include shade beyond tree cover, mist for playful summer cooling, and seating to help provide rest and connection. The goal of outdoor cool spaces is to make them as accessible to all heat vulnerable populations as possible, while having a low maintenance lift overtime.
- Long-term Land Use Planning:
- Tree planting on both public and privately owned land: The Urban Forestry Division, in partnership with the Office of Climate Resilience, run the Boston Tree Alliance that works with private property owners to enhance tree canopy on privately owned land and grow the City’s urban forest.
- Leveraging wide roads for multimodal transit: One of biggest factors contributing to urban heat island effect is that nearly 25% of Boston’s transportation emissions come from car-based solo travel, making active transportation and public transit essential for mode shift to lower emissions forms of transportation. The City of Boston hopes to evaluate wide roadways to enable modes for active transportation through supportive infrastructure like bike lanes, public transit accessibility, and accessible sidewalks.
- Bus shelter green roof pilot program: 30 green roof bus shelters were installed along fare free Route #28, traveling through the heat island neighborhoods of Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury as a pilot.
- A new street furniture contract in progress would enable the City to enhance existing design standards so that all new bus shelters can have opaque roofs at a minimum, with the goal of expanding the number of green roofs and other heat-relieving properties on bus shelters throughout the system.
As part of its future land use planning, the City of Boston is also in the process of identifying what areas of the city are viable for tree planting and what locations are better suited for structural/built shade. As the concept of structural shade in Boston is relatively new, the City is still trying to make the case for structural shade alongside other interventions like green infrastructure.
B-COOL Update: Summer 2025 Shade Monitoring Results
In July and August of 2025, the B-COOL partners A Better City and the Boston University School of Public Health worked with B-COOL Community Partners Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Turner Construction Company, and Zoo New England to measure the impact of permanent, semi-permanent, and pop-up built shade structures for heat-vulnerable populations. This work recognized that built shade structures are key heat interventions for cities on the frontline of extreme heat and that built shade is an important heat relieving tool for urban spaces where tree planting may be challenging.
For permanent shade, the B-COOL team monitored the cooling impact of green roof bus shelters along fare free Route #28 in Grove Hall, comparing the heat relief provided by green roof vs. traditionally clear roof bus shelters. For semi-permanent shade, the B-COOL team measured the impact of semi-permanent fabric shade structures above a playground at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and above a family picnic area at the Franklin Park Zoo. Finally, for pop-up shade, the B-COOL team measured the impact of a pop-up shade tent for outdoor workers’ heat relief, at a Turner Construction Company jobsite in the Seaport. At each site, the B-COOL shade monitoring team, led by PhD student Jonathan Lee, deployed two kestrel temperature sensors. These measured Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) with one sensor placed directly in the sun and the other sensor placed underneath the built shade structure, measuring WBGT from 10AM until 2PM. Across the three built shade types, the B-COOL team’s shade monitoring found anywhere from a 6 degree F to an 8.9 degree F temperature difference provided to heat vulnerable populations.
Even though 2025 summer B-COOL shade monitoring was intended to investigate the impact of shade on transit-dependent commuters on Route #28, children and families at Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and Franklin Park Zoo, and outdoor workers for Turner Construction Company, the results suggest that built shade could be impactful for providing relief to many outdoor heat-vulnerable populations as well, and could be used on both public and private property in Boston to enhance cooling. As Boston welcomes tourists for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Tall Ships, and 250th celebrations, as well as summer cookouts and neighborhood block parties in the coming months, built shade could be a critical intervention for the city, residents, workers, athletes, tourists, and others to find cooling relief in the shade.
The recording of the Value of Shade webinar may be found below . For more information on A Better City’s Extreme Heat Working Group and to get involved in our heat work, please contact Isabella Gambill.
