An international research team led by Prof. Szymon Marcinczak from the Institute of Urban Geography, Tourism Studies and Geoinformation at the Faculty of Geographical Sciences, University of Lodz investigated the problem of excessive heat exposure in urban areas of Spain. The researchers focused on five Spanish cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao and Murcia.
The research results were published in the international scientific journal "Landscape and Urban Planning", in the article "Landscapes of thermal inequality: Exploring patterns of climate justice across multiple spatial scales in Spain".
The scientists underline that their analyses are innovative, among other things, due to the research methods used (bespoke/egocentric neighbourhoods) and the analysis of the problem of thermal inequalities in urban areas of Southern Europe, which has not been sufficiently studied so far in terms of substantial heat stress.
Bespoke/egocentric neighbourhoods reflect the location of a given person and their neighbourhood understood, for example, as a circle with a specified radius. Neighbourhoods constructed in this way for individual people overlap with each other to some extent. They can be generated starting from very small spatial units, ending with very large areas, which allows for multi-scale examination of exposure to environmental factors, including exposure to heat
– says Prof. Marcińczak.
The paper reads: “[…] we illustrate the use of the bespoke neighbourhood concept in an analysis of climate justice at multiple spatial scales. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to use egocentric neighbourhoods to examine intra-urban patterns of thermal inequality. No such rigorous cross-city comparisons of intra-urban, multi-scalar patterns of thermal inequality have been conducted in Europe or elsewhere, which extends the relevance of this article beyond merely regional interest.
Thermal inequalities in Spanish cities
The study results revealed that the trends identified for Europe do not exactly correspond to those reported for North America. Furthermore, the level of heat exposure is dependent on the specifics of a particular city and the spatial scale of the analysis. Researchers have noticed that thermal inequalities are influenced by the morphology of individual cities (city layout), as well as by differences in the inhabitation of particular neighbourhoods by particular communities.
The association between higher education and heat exposure has been noted to be “generally negative” in Spain. As the experts explain, people with lower education and lower earnings tend to live in neighbourhoods with higher average temperatures, which is consistent with studies conducted in America and the Netherlands. The researchers write: "[…] the multiscale approach employed in this study clearly highlights that the association between excessive heat exposure and the social and spatial characteristics of neighbourhoods is contingent upon the spatial scale of analysis."
The degree of exposure to higher temperatures may be related to population density (densely populated areas experience higher temperatures). This is the case in Bilbao and Murcia. However, in Madrid and Seville the situation is the opposite, with less densely populated areas experiencing higher temperatures.
It has been documented that higher population density is associated with higher surface temperatures, but this must be facilitated by the local context (including the city's topography, the direction of its development, or the history of immigration). It should be noted that each city studied had a unique spatial pattern of immigrant exposure to heat. This was caused by differences in each city's topography, the microclimate within the cities, or the spatial distribution of the immigrant population at national and local scales.
The researchers indicate that precisely heat exposure is one of the main current challenges for southern European cities. According to the researchers, this depends on the environmental characteristics of each urban area, and higher temperatures may occur more frequently in areas of concentrated urbanisation with typically high buildings.
It has also been noted that in almost all cities in southern Spain, the use of street awnings and traditional street furniture will have to be considered in the future to reduce heat exposure. Urban sprawl and the imitation of Anglo-Saxon residential and construction models will also necessitate the implementation of different types of public projects, such as the use of vegetation and green spaces, to reduce the temperature in specific parts of cities.
Social/material status is crucial in explaining patterns of inequality in urban heat exposure. The findings depend on the spatial scale of the analysis
– adds Prof. Marcińczak.
Source: Szymon Marcińczak, Ricardo Iglesias-Pascual, Dominik Kopeć, Klaudia Wróbel, Veronika Mooses (2025), Landscapes of thermal inequality: Exploring patterns of climate justice across multiple spatial scales in Spain, Landscape and Urban Planning. Volume 254, 105255, ISSN 0169-2046,