Sweltering Cities

Sweltering Cities is the national community voice for heat safety. We work with communities impacted by extreme heat and rising temperatures in hot homes, hot suburbs, hot workplaces and hot towns to advocate for solutions that put community experiences at the heart of better policy making.

Too often, the impacts of heat are experienced as individual problems and private crises. Across the country, millions of people are facing sleepless nights in baking hot homes, anxiety over being able to afford cooling, or concern that their children or parents are getting sick in the heat. If we think of heat as an individual problem, then the solutions are individual, such as sitting in front of a fan or going to an air-conditioned shopping centre. When we understand that heat impacts are a collective problem, we know that the solutions have to be ambitious, equitable, and urgent.

Though all of us will be impacted by rising temperatures, some people will experience much more severe impacts. People with disabilities and chronic illnesses, poorer people, renters, women, people in insecure work and people living in public housing will all be disproportionately impacted, so solutions must prioritise those communities.

Over the next three years, we aim to build on the profile and networks that we have built over the first five years of Sweltering Cities to:
-set ambitious goals for successful advocacy and nationally coordinated action,
-build tangible local heat resilience in partnership with community organisations, and
-amplify the stories of community impacts and resilience.

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