Presentation description

Park strips, the narrow sections of land between the sidewalk and the curb, are an important part of land development within cities. These strips likely play an important role in modulating personal heat exposure within varied environments [1]. To study this, we mapped park strip cover along a 3.25 km section of West North Temple in Salt Lake City and categorized areas as grass, gravel, bare, mulch, shrub and no park strip. We walked the route on six summer afternoons (4:00 to 6:00pm) from 06/17/25 to 06/28/25. A low-cost wearable temperature and humidity sensor recorded heat index every 2 seconds (4,920 observations) and each heat index record was matched in ArcGIS Pro to the nearby park strip cover type, as well as to a shade/non-shade category derived from the National Land Cover Database canopy raster.

Heat index varied by < 1°C among the six cover types, with a range of 28.4 °C to 29.3 °C across all observations. This included park strip cover segments classified as shaded versus unshaded, where the differences never exceeded 1 °C. By contrast, day to day variation in heat index within the two-hour sample window had a 2.3 - 2.7 °C range.

We did not detect differences in heat index among park strip cover types in this study. This may be due to the measurement method (mobile) or the relative influence of other factors such as day-to-day weather variation, park strip characteristics (e.g., width), or surrounding urban form. Therefore, we suggest that future work employ fixed measurements of surface and radiant temperature on individual park strip cover types to assess how park strip cover affects pedestrians and the surrounding microclimate. Additional interventions such as denser tree canopy placement and permanent shade structures that allow more direct protection from the sun in this area are also needed.

[1] Kim YJ, Lee C, Kim JH. Sidewalk Landscape Structure and Thermal Conditions for Child and Adult Pedestrians. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Jan 18;15(1):148. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15010148. PMID: 29346312; PMCID: PMC5800247.