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- Hacker News
- Has Phoenix tried less Asphalt?by Avalaxy
- Does anyone have any real photos of the reflective asphalt?by shrx
- Plants would lower it even moreby Kallikrates
- It's hard to grow large shade trees in the desert.by chrisco255
- The equivalent of 6.6°C according to google.by skywal_l
- > Same street, two surfaces: Phoenix tested a reflective coating against regular asphalt (representative image). Image Credits: ChatGPT
Sigh. Fake pictures, plus internal links to the India Times.
The city of Phoenix has some web pages on this. There are pictures of the real coating, pictures of it being sprayed on, and links to technical studies. Phoenix has been doing this since 2021, gradually spraying more streets. It looks like grey paint but has asphalt in it.
Good idea, AI slop article.
[1] https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/streets/i...
by Animats - >but pedestrians faced higher radiant heat
As would vehicles.
Phoenix is the hottest city I've ever visited. The people were great, but I struggle to imagine why anyone would want to live there, let alone build semiconductor factories in an area already short on water supply.
by evanjrowley - The only person I know that lived near there had fibromyalgia, and had deliberately moved there from NY as they felt better in that climate. So YMMV I guess. They didn't actually live in phoenix, don't know how much difference that made.by ajb
- Can confirm the heat. In the early 1990s I got bumped from a flight out of Phoenix because it was so hot the density altitude meant they couldn't load the plane as heavily as usual.by bediger4000
- Having walked on it, it really doesn't feel any hotter than the sidewalks. And in the morning and evening (only time it really makes sense to go walking there most of the year) it's significantly nicer than the asphalt.by MarkusQ
- This is something that I fail to understand - why are there so many people there? Is there unobtainium in the hills that can only be mined from the region? Prior to modern air conditioning, why would people setup there when there are seemingly more hospitable areas?by 3eb7988a1663
- I was in Tempe/Phoenix region during the peak of summer (August I remember). It was 115°F+ everyday. Even after dinner, when I wanted to stroll around outside the mall near ASU, it was 90°F. It was insane how hot it was. I’ve lived in Houston and the heat was not even that high. But Phoenix has almost zero humidity in the summer which makes the heat a lot more bearable comparing to the sauna in Houston. Anyway, would not go there during summer again!by mrbonner
- The amount of concrete and lack of green cover is a major problem.
We’re currently away from home in a city that has waaaay more concrete than where we live and the temperature increase is horrible, even when the reported temperature is the same.
The US has built horrible cities for a couple of generations now. The incoming increase it temps will hopefully force them to redesign ie the tree plan for NYC
by testing22321 - Meanwhile CA just passed zone zero regulations to defoliate the suburbs and increase the heat island effect while destroying wildlife habitats because we'd rather run scared than use better technology to fight wildfire risk...
Anyway, back to the story, I just saw this the other day: https://www.autonocion.com/us/target-mirror-panels-supermark...
by 01100011 - "The rules ban all plants within a foot of the home and require the first five feet around homes to be free of combustible materials such as firewood, fallen leaves and branches, and mulch or wood chips. They also prohibit wooden sheds in the zone and wooden fences where attached to the house."
Sounds reasonable to me. Trees are big and can create tons of shade and still be 5 feet away from your home.
The new rule applies to Californians living in very high hazard fire zones designated by Cal Fire, applying to an estimated 2 million homes.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-08-19/state-a...
by raziel2701 - I just simply don't understand why so many people live in Pheonix given the issues with heat and lack of water sources.by hankbond
- Phoenix actually has plenty of water because of the Salt River. Tucson gets CAP water which just got whacked pretty hard in the Colorado River negotiations (20% CAP cut I think?) and I was surprised to learn that the City of Tucson has managed its water efficiency so well that nothing has to change much, price for instance.
If water supply does eventually require changes, the technically obvious and very easy change would be to reduce agriculture (pecans, alfalfa, cotton) by whatever amount is needed. Politically though, that's going to be fun. That agriculture is backed by Big Money.
The heat sucks, but the sun is very bright and my comfortable 75F house generally has a zero or small electrical bill because my roof is covered in solar panels.
The heat sucks hard for 3 months. The rest of the year is fucking glorious.
by downut - Why not use concrete instead of asphalt? This person registered a 20 degree difference between the concrete sidewalk and asphalt road.
https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/comments/14o5bdu/a_comparis...
by bestnameever - Cost.by a2ff6eeb0
- Huge temperature swings is a big part. Most people don't realize how cold it can get in the desert at night.by esikich
- There's a lot of protectionism around asphalt maintenance.
I knew a city manager that got a city out of a major projected shortfall, without cutting any services, by investing in redicing long-term expenses.
He was celebrated for it, then fired, because the asphalt company that lost its contract had more political sway than the parks and recreation or public education departments that he fought for.
by dlcarrier - Just to be a pedant, and because this fact tends to surprise people, asphalt is concrete.
Concrete is a generally defined as any mineral aggregate (so rocks and stones) mixed with a binder (normally cement, but bitumen in the case of asphalt).
As for why roads are normally made out of “normal” concrete, it’s very expensive to build roads like that. Pavements are cheaper to build out of concrete because they only carry the weight of pedestrians, not lots of rolling vehicles. You need a pretty thick slab with rebar in it if you want to build a road surface from it, due to how weak cement concrete is under tension. Asphalt concrete cheats by being flexible, so minor imperfections in the surface or sub-base don’t become sources of critical failures (although they can become pot holes). Asphalt is also cheaper and easier to patch repair, but doesn’t last as long as proper cement road surfaces.
by avianlyric - We moved to Tempe back around June 1987 and I had the summer off while the better half went to work. We moved from Gainesville, FL. One of us was raised in S. FL and the other GA. In Gainesville, we lived through the summers with an apartment and cars w/o AC. I worked in exterior renovation during one summer in Atlanta when it reached 100F regularly, and the summer after high school in S. FL installing attic HVAC metal ducts in new construction. So we thought we knew heat.
So I'm in the apartment in June and the complex has got a pool so like I'd always done I put the swimsuit on, grabbed a towel, and strode barefoot across the parking lot in the direction of the pool. It was probably 101F, nice day for June. About halfway across the lot I realized I was burning my (tough) feet. I'm a practical person and noticed the white stripes in the lot and ran to one. YUP! At least 20F cooler. Ever since I've wondered why you couldn't do something like that white paint for all the asphalt and concrete. Turns out you can. Hooray! I'm in Tucson now (it's currently 106F/22%). I'm out at 5AM for a bike ride many days and the lows have been steadily climbing over the past decades. Was 84F this morning, the lows increasing every day this week, YUK. When I ride out to the actual desert it gets noticeably cooler, maybe 5F. I want them to take this stuff and just coat the entire Tucson metro area with it.
[edited to add missing words]
by downut - Look, hydrated lime is one of the surprisingly highly efficient ways of passive cooling, maybe you want to try it?
There's plenty of literature around it, so I'll drop just this for a food start: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235271022...
by subscribed - Non-trash local source with actual photographs instead of AI-generated imagery
https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/phoenix-to...
by anigbrowl - This forwards me to a Youtube channel page.by 7734128
- India Times is something else, I've seen so much fake stuff thereby frollogaston