Heat and observed economic activity in the rich urban tropics

We use space-and-time resolved mobility data to assess how heat impacts Singapore, a rich city-state and arguably a harbinger of what is to come in the urbanizing tropics. Singapore’s offices, factories, malls, buses, and trains are widely air conditioned, its public schools less so. We document inc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: FESSELMEYER, Eric, LIU, Haoming., SALVO, Alberto., SIMORANGKIR, Rhita P B.
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/147
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1146/viewcontent/MS20220674_accepted__1_.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
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Summary:We use space-and-time resolved mobility data to assess how heat impacts Singapore, a rich city-state and arguably a harbinger of what is to come in the urbanizing tropics. Singapore’s offices, factories, malls, buses, and trains are widely air conditioned, its public schools less so. We document increased attendance and commuting to workplaces, malls, and the more air-conditioned schools on hotter relative to cooler days, particularly by low-income residents with limited use of adaptive technologies at home. Investment by rich cities may attenuate heat’s pervasive negative consequences on productive outcomes, yet this may worsen the climate emergency in the long run.