Climate change is quietly rewriting the everyday physics of city life—altering heat exposure and daylight availability in ways that don’t land evenly across populations. In dense urban environments, the same weather event can feel very different depending on housing, neighbourhood design, and access to protection, turning climate stress into a social stressor.
A new study from the University of East Anglia (UEA) compares how people experience “elemental conditions” in two global cities: London and Delhi. Rather than focusing only on measurable extremes like temperature records, the researchers examine bodily and temporal perspectives—how heat and changing daylight patterns shape movement, routines, and social interaction throughout the day and across seasons.
The team argues that effective climate adaptation must move beyond infrastructure alone. If policy treats the city as a set of technical systems, it risks missing how residents actually absorb, endure, and recover from environmental strain. Their approach highlights unequal vulnerability as something embedded in urban space itself, not just triggered by occasional disasters.
Heatwaves reveal these gaps sharply. In Delhi, temperatures reached 49.9°C in May/June 2024, while a later 52.9°C reading was attributed to a possible fault or local factors. Either way, the lived reality includes insufficient shade, high exposure for outdoor workers, and serious health risks such as dehydration and heatstroke—especially for those without indoor cooling options.
The study also points to “thermal justice” as a framework for understanding why some bodies remain exposed when others can retreat. Temperature sensors can externalize sensation, yet individual sensitivity is shaped by intersecting vulnerabilities linked to class, gender, and caste. Compounding this, infrastructure failures—like electricity shortages—can prevent fans or cooling appliances from working during critical hours.
Daylight brings its own form of inequality. In Delhi, harsh sunlight can intensify health harms, while in London, reduced exposure to daylight—linked to high-rise development and altered sunlight access—may disturb sleep and emotional wellbeing. Circadian rhythms rely on natural light cues, meaning that changes in daylight are more than comfort issues.
The researchers describe how residents in marginalized or social-housing communities may experience persistent deprivation of sky visibility from within their flats. Advocacy groups in the UK have pushed authorities to acknowledge daylight and sunlight impacts during planning, emphasizing that numerical housing changes translate into measurable effects on daily life.
They conclude that weather extremes should be understood through the “bodies” that experience them, integrating social justice into resilience planning. The study, published in Urban Studies, frames thermal and daylight equity as essential public health infrastructure—one that determines who gets to stay safe when cities heat up and days change.
Subject of Research: Thermal and daylight justice in cities
Article Title: Shifting elemental bodies in the city: towards thermal and daylight justice
News Publication Date: 29-Jul-2026
Web References: https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/casper-laing-ebbensgaard/ ; https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/kavita-ramakrishnan/
References: Urban Studies (article: Shifting elemental bodies in the city: towards thermal and daylight justice)
Keywords: climate change; thermal justice; daylight justice; urban planning; circadian rhythms; heatwaves; social equity; public health; resilience
