Critical Heat Studies: Deconstructing Heat Studies for Climate Justice

Abstract

Emergent planning strategies to address heat-driven health inequities are informed by studies examining how these distributional concerns relate to the urban built environment. Through a critical review, I argue that this ‘heat scholarship’ largely operationalizes heat as a disembodied, depoliticized, and ahistorical entity detached from lived experiences that connect the built environment with people’s health. This paper makes contributions across critical environmental justice scholarship and planning, providing a conceptual and methodological intervention through four ‘Critical Heat Studies’ principles: 1) Social production of heat, 2) Heat as a form of institutionally-sanctioned violence, 3) Intersectionality and heat epistemologies, and 4) Thermal (in)security.