Ever since Renton, Washington, hit 109 degrees during the Northwest’s record-shattering heat wave in 2021, officials of the city just south of Seattle have been trying to make Renton more resilient.
“We offer cooling centers, and we offer facilities to the public to escape, but that’s not a long-term solution,” said Gabriella Golzarian, Renton’s urban forester. “We definitely need to be planting more trees. We need to be shading the pavement. We need to be shading homes. Not everybody can afford to put in an A/C unit just like that.”
Full shade can lower pavement temperatures 15 degrees, a potentially life-saving benefit during extreme heat, according to Golzarian…