Los Angeles is becoming too hot to bear. Can it design its way cooler?
The city is forecast to double the number of days it reaches 95F by 2050, but innovative materials may help fight off the heat
It may look like a normal roof, but the top of Martin Luther King Jr hospital near the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts gleams in the light. The roof isn’t made from a typical material: instead of absorbing heat, its paint-like coating reflects the sun’s energy upward. That benefits anyone working inside the building, officials say, as it cools and makes the interior more comfortable – as well as lowering energy bills.
This type of roofing design comes at an urgent time for America’s second-largest city. In Los Angeles, long romanticized for its year-round sunshine and Mediterranean climate, heat is a slow-moving disaster. In 2022, the city grappled with a record-breaking September heatwave that brought days of triple-digit temperatures. A UCLA study predicts that by 2050 the number of days with temperatures of 95F (35C) or hotter will reach 22 a year – more than double the number that the Los Angeles region sees now.
