As temperatures soar in the coming years, the real question is not whether superheated cities are sustainable. Phoenix is not going to melt into the desert and Chennai will not return to the jungle. The question is, sustainable for who? And at what cost? As cities grow and the heat rises, the future of Phoenix and Chennai, and many cities like them, is of a kind of temperature apartheid, where some people chill in a bubble of cool and others simmer in debilitating heat. This is not how you build a just, equitable, or peaceful world.
