A matter of degrees

More of us are feeling the heat.

Multiple 40 degree C + days in our major cities were unheard of a generation ago. Now it’s becoming a summer norm. Are we the frogs in the boiling water?

Greening our cities takes on even greater importance with the urban heat trend.

The research is in – we need to act.

PlantingSeeds is working this year on an exciting urban canopy project that will help take off some of the heat. More to come there.

Consider this hard data:

• Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne exceeded 40 degrees this week – and sometimes over a number of days.
• Compounding the monster heat, the number of people living in hot, urban fringe areas has more than doubled in Melbourne and Perth this century and risen double digits in other capital cities.
• The SMH/Age newspapers report that there are now more than two million people living on the urban fringe in Melbourne, up 111 per cent from 2001 to 2024.
• The population on the urban fringe of Perth has also more than doubled.
• Sydney has 1.6 million people living on the urban fringe, up 24 per cent over the 23-year period.
• Globally, 2025 was tracking to be the equal second-hottest year on record, the European Union’s Copernicus agency said in November.

We are literally banking on trees and green cover to dial down the heat.