More than 900,000 Catalans, trapped in neighborhoods with extreme heat

BarcelonaIn the metropolitan area of Barcelona, 905,000 people live in areas where social vulnerability and extreme heat converge. This means that more than a quarter of the metropolitan population lives in a neighborhood with old and poorly insulated buildings, streets without shade, and incomes and education levels below the Catalan average. This is one of the conclusions of ongoing research by the Institute of Government and Public Policies of the UAB (IGOP), which confirms that the postal code influences heat exposure.

According to this study, neighborhoods with lower incomes, high urban density, and configured by housing estates systematically record the highest temperatures in cities. There are several examples, but the most notable are L'Hospitalet, Cornellà, El Prat, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Badalona, and some neighborhoods in Barcelona, such as La Marina del Prat Vermell in Sants-Montjuïc; El Carmel in Horta-Guinardó; and El Turó de la Peira and Can Peguera in Nou Barris.

In the metropolitan area of Barcelona, residents of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods endure on average 1°C more than those in the most affluent neighborhoods. This difference "can be critical for health," as one degree marks the boundary between a night when the body recovers and a tropical night that puts the heart under constant stress, warn the study's authors.

The research, framed within the ADIS project (Adaptation to Climate Change in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods), has analyzed data from the hot summer of 2022. Residents of these neighborhoods not only live in a warmer environment but also have much less capacity to protect themselves from it because many tenants cannot install air conditioning, and even when this appliance is an option, they cannot afford the electricity bill.

The same research has been conducted in the main Spanish metropolitan areas and shows that this situation is not exclusive to Barcelona. In Madrid, more than 2 million people live in similar conditions in areas such as Vallecas, Carabanchel, and Usera. Valencia and Seville present the same pattern, with hundreds of thousands of residents trapped in historically segregated urban areas that amplify heat.