Armstrong, Helen

Sydney, Australia, faces significant impacts from anthropogenic climate change, experiencing extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and flooding. Urban heat risks are unevenly distributed, affecting older adults, those with health issues, and low-income populations more severely. Western Sydney, consistently hotter than coastal suburbs, is home to many vulnerable groups in social housing. This housing, often old and poorly maintained, is unsuited to current and future climate conditions. While governments focus on decarbonization and heat wave preparedness, the lived experiences of those enduring the heat and the role of social practices in climate readiness are often overlooked.

Our three-year study, supported by the Australian Research Council and housing organizations, examined the effects of heat on social housing residents in three communities with distinct demographics and housing types. Engaging residents as community researchers, we uncovered diverse, place-based strategies for coping with heat, including culturally specific adaptations. These insights inform climate actions that emphasize social practices, framing “coolth” (a 19th-century term contrasting warmth) as a shared resource in urban life. Rather than an isolated feature, coolth emerges from the interplay between natural and built environments and the rhythms of social life. Viewing coolth as a "social infrastructure," a concept drawn from Daniel Klingenberg, highlights how it can be cultivated and sustained as an essential quality for enjoyable, liveable outdoor spaces. Through this perspective, coolth becomes a commons—dependent on these interactions and integral to fostering a climate-ready city.

Our co-research approach serves as a basis for social learning and, in doing so, seeks to "common" cooling-capacity. The aim is to enlarge the civic conversation to ensure that social housing residents and community housing providers can shape a more fulsome, robust, and commons-based approach to living with heat.