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The City of Detroit’s Climate Strategy is a framework for residents, businesses, city departments, and industry to achieve the city’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission goals and increase climate resilience. Protecting residents from extreme heat is one of the Strategy’s objectives. Photo credit: Marshall Frederick’s Spirit of Detroit statue, C.M. Highsmith (Library of Congress).
Project Dates: Fall 2023–Spring 2025
Client: City of Detroit Office of Sustainability
SEAS Faculty Advisor: Kerry C. Duggan, Lecturer
SEAS Students: Ross Buchan, Olivia Butts, Maggie Cooney, Amina Dunn, Shwetha Govindan, Renee Magyar
About the Client
The City of Detroit Office of Sustainability has a mission to advance climate action in Detroit. The Office’s priorities include advancing the city’s climate goals set forth in the Sustainability Action Agenda and Detroit Climate Strategy, reducing emissions, increasing climate resilience, and improving residents’ overall quality of life.
About the Project
SEAS is continuing to work with the City of Detroit Office of Sustainability on a second-phase project focused on heat abatement, as part of the Detroit Climate Strategy’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Temperatures in the Great Lakes region have increased 2.3°F in the past seventy years, with more drastic increases expected. Urban populations face particular risk from extreme heat events due to the urban heat island effect.
Detroit’s Climate Strategy not only aims to reduce emissions and enhance resilience to climate change, but also focuses on protecting vulnerable residents from extreme heat. The project supports the City of Detroit Office of Sustainability’s action strategy by recommending home weatherization, heat reduction strategies, and efficiency upgrades in participating neighborhoods, along with P3 opportunities and technological innovations to enhance the city’s tree canopy and green space.
Recommendations will be based on a variety of factors, including community data, building construction type, temperature maps, available cooling technologies, and community-based urban heat adaptation programs in other cities.
The team's final report and deliverables will be available on this webpage, upon the project's conclusion in April 2025.