By NATALIE TSUR
The sun weighs down Jersey City and its residents, signaling the start to a new season. Astrid Gamarra sighs, knowing that overworking her air conditioning and fans will not be enough to escape the heat. If she opens the window, the congested air will stiffen her room. Her options to survive the summer are thinning out.
Like every year, she decides it is too unmanageable to stay at home and instead takes a walk by the waterfront for a comfortable breeze. Open areas seem to be the only alternatives to persevere through the city’s muggy heat. The hot days are stubborn, and relentlessly persist all season, giving residents little to no relief.
“There’s not a lot of air circulation because the [infrastructure] blocks the wind,” Gamarra said. “If you’re inside of the city, it feels a lot hotter than being somewhere that’s more of a suburb.”
[AUDIO: Gamarra compares Jersey City’s weather to North Jersey, explaining the drastic difference.]
Excessive heat is not uncommon within urban neighborhoods, which are referred to as “urban heat islands” (UHI). This phenomenon occurs when structures, such as buildings or bridges, trap and re-emit the sun’s heat, causing the city to experience warmer temperatures than surrounding lower-density rural sites.
It may feel most similar to sitting in a hot car with rolled-up windows, which absorbs the heat and tightens the air. The poor air circulation and immoderate heat can altogether lead to serious health concerns, such as heatstroke and heat exhaustion.
Catalyst organization Sustainable Jersey City (SJC) has studied local tree canopy cooling effects, and intends to spend a recent $10,000 funding from Unilever to survey excessive heat within three major New Jersey UHI — Jersey City, Newark and Elizabeth — beginning this summer.
“The data coming out of these studies will form the basis for municipal decision making and our own equity-focused climate action planning,” said Debra Italiano, SJC founder and chair, during an interview.
Communities within these cities may be able to mitigate and survive exhaustive heat after the study is conducted with the support of major and local environmental service groups CAPA Strategies, Groundwork Elizabeth and South Ward Environmental Alliance (SWEA).
SJC will be working with technology partner CAPA Strategies in acquiring equipment, data analysis and technical assistance. In order to complete the study, SJC’s team will be gathering a pool of volunteers, both city residents and Unilever employees, to record their driving routes around certain areas. This information will help the organizations measure tree canopies and heat mapping.
Crowdsourcing allows the city’s residents, themselves, to inform scientists of their concerns and observations, making the project more equity-focused and community driven. In Jersey municipalities, this can help reveal egregious lines of racial and economic injustices.
For instance, certain areas within Jersey City have indicated a 16 to 21 degree increase in surface temperature due to urban heat islands. This can adversely and disproportionately affect members of compromised groups, such as the elderly, low-income, mobility-impaired and communities of color.
Climate change magnifies the UHI effect, potentially increasing coronavirus infection rates
Pollution is another prominent issue affecting these cities. More specifically, Elizabeth and Newark are geographically impacted by the toxic air quality emanating from Newark Liberty International Airport and Port Newark. The poor air quality, then, is aggravated by UHI conditions.
Newark is home to nearly 300,000 residents, predominantly consisting of families of minority status earning a median wage of $35,199 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This densely populated city houses its systemically poorer demographic in highly polluted areas.
Katarina Martillo, junior at Rutgers University-Newark, commutes from suburb New Milford, N.J., and finds that the greatest contrast between the two municipalities is the air and water qualities.
“Since my school is in central Newark, where they just built a Whole Foods and an Amazon building around University Central, the air quality reflects the construction,” Martillo said.
[AUDIO: Martillo offers a personal look into Newark’s development.]
“All three municipalities suffer from public health issues, including heat-related illnesses and accentuated respiratory ailments,” Italinio added. “Jersey City has the highest rate of adult Asthma in Hudson County, and is already seeing Ward F (Bergen-Lafayette) and Ward A (Greenville) being most impacted by the UHI Effect.”
The conclusions drawn from SJC’s reports will also offer insight into the relationship between harmful air pollutants and the coronavirus pandemic. Covid Act Now, an independent nonprofit, reports that the virus is slowly spreading throughout Union, Newark and Hudson Counties in New Jersey, but overall vulnerability remains very high within urbanized populations.
Although SJC will not be able to immediately enact solutions to urban heat islands, their study will recommend ways to minimize the effects of climate change: lower temperatures, electricity demand, air pollution, greenhouse gases and harmful health impacts.
Gentrification directly affects urban expanse and heat distribution
According to a joint investigation by NPR and the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, the relationship between heat and household income is not unusual across major U.S. cities.
The same study finds that lower-income areas have less green spaces, given that they are typically located near highways or industrial spaces, which generally trap more heat. As a result, communities of minority status are more likely to make up these less desirable areas and effectively suffer from the heat.
The narrative doesn’t shift when looking at Jersey City. Its population of roughly 260,000 residents is beginning to see an influx of white community members, while minority groups are being displaced.
“Gentrification in Jersey City has created a space where folks are pushed out of their neighborhoods, by a population the city government seems to prioritize,” BMU said.
— Black Men United (@BlackMUJC) April 13, 2021
“A lot of the new money that is coming into Jersey City is not going to the people who were here from the very beginning, when it was not as wealthy as it is now,” Gamarra added.
[AUDIO: Gamarra reflects on changes she would like to see within Jersey City, namely an investment in underserved areas.]
What to expect after the study is conducted
To reach a more in-depth understanding of how heat is distributed and geographically magnified among New Jersey’s urban neighborhoods, SJC will be quickly advancing to their next step.
“We’re wrapping up the planning phase and will start recruiting volunteers soon,” Italiano said. “It’s a unique opportunity to work with a national data-driven decision framework and we’re looking forward to it.”
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