Bloch’s book has good ideas that architects and policy leaders can embrace to better use shade to protect people from the world’s increasingly hot weather.
A roving, inveterately curious account that argues convincingly for his subject’s centrality to community health ... Measured ... [Bloch's] tone is so evenhanded that it can belie the urgency that would seem to follow from his diagnoses .... Part of the issue is that Bloch tends to toggle between Los Angeles and the country writ large ... This collapse risks giving the impression that the United States is uniformly bad on shade ... More examination of cases where U.S. cities have made different choices might have sustained the nuance of his earlier chapters.
Filled with...invitations to see the built environment afresh ... Bloch offers the opportunity to analyze city design through choices we usually overlook ... Bloch’s well-supported critiques of California politicians and their failure to advance the shade agenda,and bouts of international tourism to shelter beneath innovative shade systems ... There are other urban shade issues Bloch could have addressed in more depth ... Bloch will have you convinced that our hotter seasons require shelter from the everyday sun as well as hundred-year storms.
Engaging ... [Bloch's] reasoning is logical and convincing, and most readers will be on board when he posits that conversations about shade are just beginning.
A thoroughly documented and thought-provoking book, certain to spark attention and discussion ... Bloch explores a catalog of possible solutions; none is examined in great depth, but the scope shows why this problem is not easily solved and presents an urgent need for continued conversation.
Mixed-bag ... Bloch is at his best describing racial and socioeconomic inequalities in shade access ... He loses steam a bit when he tries to address climate change more broadly ... Still, readers will find some solid information about how local communities are dealing—or not—with rising temperatures.
