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CLARIN

Scorching Cities Like Buenos Aires Are Not Just About Global Warming

Buildings, tarmac and air conditioning are turning some cities into fetid, airless saunas. Experts urge more trees and grass to mitigate the heat of increasingly hot cement jungles.

Street heat in Buenos Aires
Street heat in Buenos Aires
Miguel Jurado

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — Buildings, tarmac and the colonial laws of Spain will make us suffocate from heat. For we are not suffering from high temperatures just because of global warming. On an ordinary summer day in Buenos Aires, the thermal sensation is almost five degrees Celsius higher than Greater Buenos Aires and 10 more than in country areas. Why? Because of buildings, tarmac and the Laws of the Indies.

Let's take it in parts. All big cities suffer from the so-called heat island effect, which has four causes. The first is lack of trees, bushes and plants that create shade for buildings and cool the air through evaporation. Second is the proliferation of impermeable material on buildings and of dark pavement like asphalt that absorbs heat. Third is the lack of ventilation between buildings. And the final cause is the heat given off by cars and air conditioning.

Evidently, Buenos Aires has all these conditions, even though it does have many trees and parks. They could be better distributed, and there should perhaps be more.

To make the situation even worse, our city is a daughter of the laws and norms Spain imposed to rule the Americas, which were mistaken in certain areas.

Now, the Spaniards meant no harm (don't get me started on that), but they lacked imagination. In the early 16th century when those laws were compiled, nobody thought cities could become what they have today. For example, Spanish colonial law envisioned preventing, not encouraging, local winds. The laws stated that the streets should be traced outward from a central square with corners in the same direction as the main winds. Thus Buenos Aires was built with the Plaza de Mayo facing east to west and its junction with the Yrigoyen and Bolívar streets facing southwest, whence comes the vigorous Pampero wind.

The corner of Yrigoyen and Balcarce faces southeast, where the southeastern wind comes in. Our peninsular ancestors didn't want the wind to blow along the avenues and raise dust and goodness knows what else.

Buildings block breezes

We were deprived of these main winds then, though colonial streets did allow the movement of breezes from the Río del Plata. That is, until the city grew with more and more cement and asphalt, which helped accumulate heat. A recent study from the Journal of Geophysical Research concluded that accumulation of heat in cities hinders air circulation and increases pollution. So long then, breeze from the Río del Plata!

[rebelmouse-image 27088745 alt="""" original_size="640x360" expand=1]

Opening the windows in the Argentine capital. Photo: Herman Pinera

Certainly there is global warming and we all suffer it, but in cities like Buenos Aires, insufficient greenery, buildings and tarmac make it much hotter than surrounding regions. Our founder Pedro de Mendoza wasn't wrong to plan the city facing a river, but because everything we build now blocks its pleasant breeze, we can see how Buenos Aires has become overheated and its air polluted.

Two recent studies confirm this. Specialists considered how the wind behaves in very polluted cities. Houston, one of the most polluted in the United States, is in this sense very similar to Buenos Aires. It is close to a bay, a few kilometers from the Gulf of Mexico, but building development has blocked the winds that used to take smog out to sea by night. Yet buildings are not the only, or even the primary, cause of this effect in Houston. It's the heat from sidewalks that changed the conduct of winds and ensured that polluted air would hover over the city.

The author of that study, Fei Chen, believes that unfettered city growth could curb winds even more and increase pollution. "Air circulation should today be a fundamental concern in designing cities," he says.

Paradoxically, for refreshing breezes to blow, a city's temperature must be reduced and for that, experts urge cities to plant more trees and grass and build a recreational lake or two.

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Future

Livestream Shopping Is Huge In China — Will It Fly Elsewhere?

Streaming video channels of people shopping has been booming in China, and is beginning to win over customers abroad as a cheap and cheerful way of selling products to millions of consumers glued to the screen.

A A female volunteer promotes spring tea products via on-line live streaming on a pretty mountain surrounded by tea plants.

In Beijing, selling spring tea products via on-line live streaming.

Xinhua / ZUMA
Gwendolyn Ledger

SANTIAGOTikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, has spent more than $500 million to break into online retailing. The app, best known for its short, comical videos, launched TikTok Shop in August, aiming to sell Chinese products in the U.S. and compete with other Chinese firms like Shein and Temu.

Tik Tok Shop will have three sections, including a live or livestream shopping channel, allowing users to buy while watching influencers promote a product.

This choice was strategic: in the past year, live shopping has become a significant trend in online retailing both in the U.S. and Latin America. While still an evolving technology, in principle, it promises good returns and lower costs.

Chilean Carlos O'Rian Herrera, co-founder of Fira Onlive, an online sales consultancy, told América Economía that live shopping has a much higher catchment rate than standard website retailing. If traditional e-commerce has a rate of one or two purchases per 100 visits to your site, live shopping can hike the ratio to 19%.

Live shopping has thrived in China and the recent purchases of shopping platforms in some Latin American countries suggests firms are taking an interest. In the United States, live shopping generated some $20 billion in sales revenues in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey. This constituted 2% of all online sales, but the firm believes the ratio may become 20% by 2026.

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