Too Hot to Handle: Small Cities Struggle to Confront Rising Heat
As climate change intensifies, a Lehigh researcher studies how extreme heat presents troubles as resource-strapped cities race to protect vulnerable residents without formal plans or sufficient funding.
As climate change pushes temperatures higher, extreme heat has emerged as the nation’s deadliest weather hazard — claiming more lives each year than floods or hurricanes — yet many U.S. cities remain unprepared. Policy analyst Karen Beck Pooley studied heat mitigation policies of one small city and her findings show how local responses could be key to building future urban resilience.
While climate adaptation efforts often prioritize flooding or sea-level rise, extreme heat remains alarmingly overlooked, says Pooley, professor of practice in the Department of Political Science. A 2015 review by climate researchers found that just 4% of climate adaptation resources addressed heat. By 2020, only a minority of cities included it in emergency or resilience planning. Fewer still had implemented tangible solutions like cooling infrastructure, heat alerts or public awareness campaigns.
This oversight is dangerous. Heat waves disproportionately affect those who are already vulnerable: the elderly, low-income families, outdoor workers, people with chronic illnesses like asthma and residents of aging, poorly insulated buildings. Without access to air conditioning or safe public spaces, they face life-threatening conditions as summer heat intensifies.
A Case Study: Allentown, Pennsylvania
To understand how smaller cities are responding — or struggling to respond — Pooley spent the summer of 2024 observing efforts in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Like many cities of its size, Allentown faces steep barriers, including decades of disinvestment, aging infrastructure and widespread poverty. The city's median income is just 60% of the regional average, and unemployment is significantly higher. Many of its buildings were constructed before 1970 and lack modern cooling systems.
In Allentown, the challenges are compounded by the city's geography. The most heat-prone areas are also the most socially and economically vulnerable — neighborhoods with high poverty rates, dense housing, low tree cover and some of the highest asthma rates in the country. These "urban heat islands" often reach summer temperatures well over 100 degrees. In 2024 alone, the city faced 13 days of National Weather Service-issued Excessive Heat Warnings.
“Something I kept hearing from city staff was how difficult coordinating a regional response to high-heat days and heat emergencies can be,” says Pooley, who is also co-director of Lehigh’s Small Cities Lab. “Heat preparation isn't mentioned in many cities' or counties’ emergency management plans, so there aren’t formal protocols or a clear chain of command or division of responsibilities. It's more just a matter of who's getting who on the phone to figure things out in the midst of hot weather.”
Despite lacking a formal heat action plan, Allentown has taken important early steps. On extreme heat days, the city opens libraries, community centers and senior centers as cooling locations, provides free bus rides to indoor malls, and deploys fire trucks to create "water curtains" in parks and playgrounds. It offers free access to public pools and spray parks and, in partnership with local nonprofits, distributes fans and air conditioners to children with severe asthma.
“We can’t change the temperature of the day, but we can influence how hot it feels on the ground.”
“There are many groups who are particularly vulnerable to heat,” she says. “In Allentown, if you look at those neighborhoods with a higher heat island effect, older housing lacks air conditioning, nearly 30% of residents are under 18, a much larger share than countywide. So children are more likely to be impacted by heat, and those with health conditions like respiratory illnesses are particularly vulnerable. As a result, for Allentown, strategies that target these children make a lot of sense.”
The city has started referencing heat in its broader planning documents, Pooley notes. Its 2021 Climate Action Report acknowledges the risks of rising temperatures and proposes measures like promoting green roofs and limiting impervious surfaces. A newly formed partnership to improve city parks has already begun planting trees to increase shade and reduce heat retention.
Systemic Challenges, Strategic Opportunities
Yet, Allentown's experience also highlights systemic gaps in how heat is addressed at the local and regional level. With many potential players — health departments, utilities, schools, nonprofits — there's a real risk of inaction due to unclear leadership and fragmented responsibilities. Still, Allentown's emerging strategies offer a national model for other small and mid-sized cities. By embedding heat responses into existing initiatives, cities can stretch limited resources further, Pooley says.
“On the city level, we need to really think about access to shade and cooling locations, and how these get prioritized in infrastructure planning processes or neighborhood planning processes. And cities need to think about spaces like bus stops and playgrounds and other public spaces as potential cooling resources for people on hot days.”
Why Allentown Matters
Pooley’s research is impactful in that more than half of Americans live in small or mid-sized cities like Allentown. These places are not often thought of as climate frontlines, but they are experiencing more intense and frequent heat waves, and they often lack the capacity of larger cities to respond.
“Larger cities are more likely to have done this kind of planning,” she says. “They may even have a staff person in City Hall whose job is to oversee heat mitigation and management. But we need to figure out how to do more of this kind of work in cities with smaller staffs, less capacity, or fewer resources. There’s also valuable research to be done—examining what different places are doing, sharing best practices, and finding ways to implement these ideas more widely – something we’re digging into at the Small Cities Lab. We can’t change the temperature of the day, but we can influence how hot it feels on the ground.”
The literature on urban heat mitigation is still growing, and best practices for small cities remain hard to find. That's why Allentown's story matters. Its approach — patchworked, evolving and community-based — reflects the real challenges and opportunities that many cities across the country now face. As climate change continues to escalate, building local capacity, forming strong partnerships and integrating heat mitigation into everyday planning will be critical. The heat is here. Whether cities can keep their residents safe depends on what they do next.