{"id":162136,"date":"2025-08-27T04:53:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T04:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ancient-world-knew-the-importance-of-shade-how-did-modern-cities-forget-kcrw\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T04:53:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T04:53:01","slug":"ancient-world-knew-the-importance-of-shade-how-did-modern-cities-forget-kcrw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ancient-world-knew-the-importance-of-shade-how-did-modern-cities-forget-kcrw\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient world knew the importance of shade. How did modern cities forget? – KCRW"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bird hides in the shade of a thin tree on the sidewalk.<\/span> Credit: Shutterstock.<\/span>
LA is on the tail end of a heat wave, with temperatures expected to cool off a bit today, into the high 80s and low 90s. Each year, heat kills more people than tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods combined.<\/a> But we don\u2019t talk about heat with the same urgency reserved for other natural disasters.
What can go a long way to saving lives is shade, which lowers ambient air temperatures by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit.\u00a0
Humans used to know the value of shade and how to create it in cities. From the porticoes of ancient Rome to the alleys of Mesopotamia, many of the world\u2019s oldest cities were packed with shade infrastructure.\u00a0
But many modern-day cities are so devoid of shade that they\u2019re usually much hotter than the landscape around them. That\u2019s known as the urban heat island effect.
This problem is particularly severe in Los Angeles. And in poor neighborhoods, people can wait a long time at baking bus stops, huddled under the shadow of a stop sign.
Author Sam Bloch\u2019s new book argues for a return to shady city streets \u2014 Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource.\u00a0<\/i><\/a>
Within the pages, he focuses on the Mesopotamian city of Ur, located in the Fertile Crescent in what is now Iraq. Thousands of years ago, it was designed specifically to minimize sun exposure, with houses packed tightly together. The city was organized on a diagonal grid. \u201cThe idea is when you have that 45-degree angle, you can catch prevailing winds, but also cast equal amounts of sun and shade on both sides of the street, pretty much in all seasons,\u201d he explains.\u00a0
In Bologna, Italy, porticoes (covered sidewalks) run for 38 miles, and most are carved out of the ground floor of the building \u2014 the second story hanging over the sidewalk, like a public roof, Bloch describes. He says that since the 13th century, a statute has required Bologna property owners to maintain these passages for the public \u2014 for eternity.
\u201cJust the idea that we could compel developers to build and maintain covered sidewalks for the benefit of the public, I think we could do something like that in America in exchange for some other development perk,\u201d he suggests.\u00a0\u00a0
The book outlines major forces that have pushed American cities away from shade: the widening of roads to accommodate more traffic at the expense of sidewalks; adoption of air conditioning; and fear of shadows.\u00a0
\u201cThose urban planners reshaping cities for cars, they were also trying to rid cities of shadows. They believed that shadows and daytime darkness can cause tuberculosis and other urban pathologies like crime and depression. So \u2026 they impose height limits to keep the buildings short and their shadows short. In LA, up until the 1950s, no building could be taller than City Hall. Houses get pushed farther away from the street. They get spaced far apart from each other to create more room for light and air, and to prevent these buildings from casting shadows on each other.\u201d
A longstanding bias against shadows has also existed. Bloch found in his research that \u201cshady people\u201d is an ancient Roman slur for beggars, prostitutes, and gamblers who hid in porticos of ancient Roman streets.\u00a0
\u201cSo this idea that darkness is where we find vice and unwanted elements, this is a very old idea, and it’s still expressed today.\u201d
In LA today, there\u2019s so little shade partly because SoCal was historically sold as the \u201cland of sunshine,\u201d Bloch explains. \u201cSo many of the iconic images of the California lifestyle have to do with sunshine, right? The most iconic tree, the palm, casts no shadow, right? It’s just a skinny silhouette. But I think as temperatures continue to rise and heat becomes more extreme \u2026 we should be thinking about the dark side of, let’s say, a bright future.\u201d
Redlining has been another issue in LA. During Bloch\u2019s research, he spent time in Windsor Square, a historic district in the middle of LA, \u201cwith a tree canopy so dense you can see it on satellite maps.\u201d He says residents here paid good money \u2014 and still do \u2014 to maintain it as a luxury neighborhood. Homes are built on spacious lots, sidewalks boast large trees, and telephone poles and utilities are underground.\u00a0
However, when Windsor Square was originally built, Black people and other ethnic minorities weren\u2019t allowed to live there due to racially restricted covenants, he explains. Instead, they could live in South LA\u2019s working-class Watts neighborhood. \u201cThere wasn’t any money available for trees or environmental amenities because Watts had been redlined.\u201d\u00a0
Portland experienced something similar. According to a climate adaptation researcher Bloch cites, temperatures were 25 degrees cooler in a rich neighborhood on the west side of Portland, which was in the shadow of a natural forest, compared to a poor neighborhood on the other side of town, which had experienced discrimination and disinvestment.\u00a0
\u201cWe probably think of trees as natural, and to a degree, they are, but when it comes to their unequal distribution in cities, and especially in LA, there is nothing natural about it.\u201d
People have made attempts, unsuccessfully, to add more shade. In May 2023, LA unveiled a new device, called La Sombrita, that attached to poles at four bus stops. It was meant to give relief to public transit riders who had to wait in \u201cotherwise pretty hostile environments.\u201d It was a two-foot-wide, skateboard-shaped strip of metal that created a shadow large enough for maybe two people, Bloch describes.\u00a0
\u201cI think there were around 700,000 people in the region who boarded a bus on the day that La Sombrita was unveiled. And at least within LA City Limits, three-quarters of them had no dedicated bus shelter to protect them from the sun. And the idea that this little piece of metal would rectify this shade problem that the city has been dealing with at bus stops at least since the 1970s \u2014 was laughable.\u201d
However, he notes that the designers were just trying to work with the constraints the city placed on them. \u201cWhen La Sombrita was first drawn up, the designers showed me what they had in mind. It was a much larger sunscreen with multiple panels, like a room divider between the sidewalk and the street, with a larger canopy and a bench. But as they realized that this was supposed to be a pilot project, and they wanted to get it done quickly, that they couldn’t work with other city departments on this, that they had to just ram it through without dealing with permitting, and because this city department was basically working in isolation, they weren’t able to work with all the other myriad city agencies that that control street space.\u201d
He says La Sombrita shows bureaucratic dysfunction, and that the city\u2019s longstanding neglect of pedestrians and bus riders made it tough to solve the problem.\u00a0
Bloch\u2019s research also revealed \u201cthe idea of weaponizing sunlight in Los Angeles against undesirables.\u201d For example, Pershing Square used to be a tree-shaded park where people hung out, staged protests, and hosted all sorts of \u201curban activities.\u201d However, the area was redesigned in the 1950s and again in the 1960s to make room for an underground parking garage.
\u201cWhen that happened, the subsurface at the top was no longer deep enough to support real tree roots, so the park became this thin expanse of grass,\u201d Bloch recalls. \u201cAnd what was surprising to me was that the business owners in the area actually liked that open, exposed, survivable quality. They wanted to get rid of gay cruisers. They wanted to get rid of homeless people.\u201d\u00a0
He says the transformation of Pershing Square set the template for how many powerful people in LA think about public space.\u00a0
Plus, \u201cduring the pandemic, police officers were actually telling homeowners that there was nothing they could do legally about these encampments on their sidewalks. But if homeowners wanted to cut down their trees or take away the shade effect \u2014 or the comfort level, as one cop in the San Fernando Valley called it \u2014 that might effectively disperse the unhoused, and they would take their problems elsewhere.\u201d
The solution, Bloch says, is to think of shade and trees as integral urban infrastructure. With that mindset, the city might fund them like it does roads and sewers.\u00a0
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