I’m completely captivated by Benefield’s ‘Redlined, No Shade’ umbrella. While it speaks directly to one of the major reasons we see shade inequity in US cities, it also contains an accurate representation about how these areas were geographically distributed with the center of the umbrella representing the center of an urban area, and progressively moving to green and blue colors towards the edges. The colors are remarkably close to the actual colors of these maps, and they provoke a series of questions for me, including: How might a museum in the 1950s have responded to this umbrella and the message it is sending about the inequities that current policies are generating? How might shade reflect the differences in color that we see on the maps and on people’s faces — red as hot and blue as cool?

Vivek Shandas, PhD

Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University

The ‘Cool Canopy’ umbrella really does evoke the wonderful feeling of standing under a dense canopy of trees. For me, it suggests more than just shade, although I recognize that shade can provide a significant cooling benefit. It made me reflect on the multiple benefits that these trees may provide, often referred to as ecosystem services, including improved air and water quality, wildlife habitat, and recreation. The image on the umbrella also feels soothing to me, which makes me think of the notion of biophilia, and decades of research in environmental psychology, both of which suggest that we as humans have an innate need to connect with nature. These are all reasons why I believe it is problematic that some neighborhoods have a lot less tree canopy […] If we want to make our cities resilient to increasing heat risks, we need to acknowledge and address these inequities. Indeed, many U.S. cities are expanding urban forestry programs to address heat. Reducing disparities in tree canopy cover can be part of the long-term solution, but there are many other strategies cities should also implement to both mitigate heat and manage its consequences.

Sara Meerow, PhD

Professor of Planning, Arizona State University

The ‘Prickly Pear in Bloom’ umbrella really spoke to me. I loved the colors, I loved the representation of the native flora – the beauty and resilience that is in there. It’s a reminder that some of arid environments don’t have lush trees, but that the flora that they do have is still beautiful, functional, precious, and valuable.

Umbrellas and shade from umbrellas are actually something that has specific connotations in the part of the world that I live in, in cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) where the climate is very hot most of the year. There’s a specific group of people, usually the female service workers, who carry umbrellas because they can’t afford transport by private car, so they use public transport and often the last mile isn’t shaded. So the umbrella is a practical and cost effective way of being comfortable in the outdoors.

And I’ve started to do the same; carry around an umbrella in my car with me and it’s come in really handy, because really all it takes to go from unpleasant to acceptable, or even pleasant, sometimes is shade and there are some cost effective and water-efficient ways of providing shade for everybody.

Huda Shaka

Planner, Dubai

Umbrellas have never been only about function. Umbrellas have a long history of dual purpose that dates back at least two thousand years in China, where they offered protection and were symbols of status. The earliest Chinese umbrellas were constructed of either silk or paper, with elaborately painted scenes of landscapes and animals. Used by nobles, aristocrats and the wealthy, umbrellas were symbols of prestige and power. Their status was enshrined by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who had buried with him more than 8,000 terracotta soldiers, among which was a large umbrella shading a chariot and charioteer. Eventually, umbrellas became an accessory for the elite and fashionable women around the world.

The exhibit, “Shade,” reflects how much the users and status of umbrellas have changed over the past several millennia. Today, across East Asian cities, from Shanghai to Singapore, Tokyo to Taipei, it is common to see pedestrians use umbrellas as protection from the sun and rain. In East Asia, pedestrians are ubiquitous, because cities are designed around humans and public transportation is convenient. In East Asia, even people with financial means to own private vehicles use public transportation. Hence, nearly everyone needs an umbrella because nearly everyone is a pedestrian. In East Asia, umbrellas are no longer symbols of power; they serve utilitarian functions. In L.A., pedestrians are rare, because the city is designed around the automobile and public transport is inconvenient. In L.A., pedestrians are more likely to be those who do not have the financial means to own private vehicles and thus are more exposed to rain and sun. In L.A., umbrellas are not symbols of power and prestige; they serve utilitarian functions for the exposed. Those who bear the brunt of heat need umbrellas. More than ever, umbrellas are not only about function. They offer protection and also symbols of exposure.

Karen C. Seto

Faculty Director, Hixon Center for Urban Ecology and Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography & Urbanization Science

Such
Heart
Aspires to
Delicate
Oasis,
Wonderfully.

Emilio Fantin

Artist, Bologna

Cities like LA, Hyderabad and Milan are increasingly becoming Very Hot Cities, for some or all parts of the year, making them unlivable. But what does ‘unlivable’ mean for those who are forced to stay in a city during a heat wave because they have nowhere else to go? Which is, of course, the state in which most of the city’s population usually finds themselves.

It is the most vulnerable – the street vendors, homeless people, beggars, traffic police, construction workers, road cleaners – who have to deal with the worst of the heat. As we pour more concrete into cities, making heat waves intensify, the Right to the City is increasingly becoming all about having or not having the Right to Shade. And yet, shade is one of the least studied, discussed or taught topics in areas such as landscape design, urban ecology, city planning or architecture, fields of enquiry that have a major influence on the shape and form and life in built cities.

As one street vendor, a young man in Hyderabad, told Sukanya Basu – shade is useful because it attracts more clients, who come to chat and spend time under a tree, and then end up buying some food, or a glass of sugarcane juice, adding to his income. Another woman, also a street vendor, only had access to a small tree, whose a canopy that provided little shade – but she tied a piece of plastic to the tree trunk, anchoring it to create a little shelter for herself, while she enjoyed the occasional breeze blowing through its branches.

The word for shade in my language, Kannada, is ನೆರಳು (Neralu) – a word associated with many meanings, as words often are – with ideas of shelter, safety, wellbeing. A local, community-run tree festival that ran in Bangalore for some years was called Neralu, for the same reason. The day our cities lose their Neralu, they turn inhospitable, barren, unsafe.

We all need the Right to Shade.

Harini Nagendra

Ecologist and Novelist at API, Bangalore

The clever juxtaposition of a beating heart against Los Angeles’s asphalt roadway “arteries” highlights for me the love-hate relationship that a city can have with freeways and the sprawling urban growth those roads have nurtured. On the one hand, freeways can link us. Like blood capillaries in our body, cars flow across the city; a continual pulse of movement that, on the surface, seems to connect us with people, places, and things. On the other hand, history shows that our freeway’s legacy also divides us. By bisecting communities, roads often break the heart and minds of a neighborhood. For example, one’s well-being and health are often tied to which side of the freeway you live.

The backdrop of blood red in this piece emphasizes for me that there is a noticeable absence of nature in these broken neighborhoods. An absence that is keenly felt by all as temperatures skyrocket, exacerbated by a changing change and the heat-absorbing black asphalt. Is our heart in the right place?

I personally believe that this hardened heart does not reflect the spirit and ideals of Angelinos. This umbrella piece also invites us to open our hearts and minds to what we really value as an individual, community, city and region. Los Angeles will always be synonymous with freeway culture, but maybe we should be following our hearts in a new, greener, and equitable direction.

Miranda Hutten

Natural Resources Manager, USFS, Los Angeles

To think about shade is to think about the sun and its connection to life and death on earth. Each of the 23 umbrellas in Shade in LA finds a place on this spectrum to articulate a statement. Most of the works, like Where’s Shade, Rainforest, and Cool Canopy celebrate the connection between sunlight and plant life. Others, like Trapped in the Oil Cobweb, Wildfire Smoke, and California’s Wildfires and Deer, underscore the disasters connected to relentless sun and climate change.

Sometimes the best seat is in the shade; sometimes it is in the sun. Shade is more tangible in urban environments. Occasionally, it is even litigated. When a tower is proposed for a plot of land near a garden it does not “create shade” it “casts a shadow.” The future shadow of a forthcoming luxury tower is as real as it is unwelcomed for it will steal a portion of the sky that feeds so many plants.

Meanwhile, yesterday I spent $300 on shade for plants. Now we anxiously await rolls of shade fabric so we can install them above a little farm growing on the rooftop of a school in the South Bronx. All summer long we have kept this new garden well watered, but it wasn’t enough. The direct sun and resulting heat is too much for the plants to handle. Instead of growing lush and fruiting they are stunted in a fight to survive. On a sunny summer day the rooftop reaches 110 degrees and the scorched air moving across the asphalt roof and down the redbrick walls is too much for the plants to handle. But that will change soon, on Thursday or Friday or Monday, when the shade finally arrives in the mail.

Matthew López-Jensen

Artist and Photographer, New York

Many of the artists depicted plant life—trees, rainforest, bougainvillea—in their work. I think the juxtaposition of natural themes on an unnatural medium helps draw our attention to the many ways we can achieve shade, and the way all of those features work together as ‘shade infrastructure’ to reduce the heat burden that sunlight puts on the human body.

Kelly Turner, PhD

Professor of Planning and Center Co-Director, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

I think we don’t talk enough about the dual nature of wildfires. Terrifying, destructive, traumatic of course. But they are strangely beautiful too as seen in this umbrella. We know they can help the land regenerate, so beauty is inherent; it is not just an aesthetic description. I own a paper collage from Francesca Gabbiani of a wildfire. I bought it two decades ago when I first moved to California. At the time, wildfires were not the climate change indicator they are now and I bought it for the beauty. I still have it hanging in my bedroom.

David Eisenman, MD, MSHS

Physician and Professor, UCLA Schools of Medicine and Public Health

“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
– Jane Austen

Never like this year have I felt the power of a sliver of shade. I am almost sixty but I never remember such a hot spell, with the temperature rising to almost 40 C already at the end of May… Relentless sun, day, after day, after day and no rain in sight.  Our well dried out and in the end we decided to give up on the vegetable garden, it just was not worth it. The only respite is under the big oak tree that sits in front of the house, regaling us with a cool spot under it glorious canopy.  

In the city of Rome, people zigzagged across the streets trying to find the cooler path to their destination, skipping from one tree to next and getting away from the boiling asphalt. I traveled to Germany and then to Belgium seeking cooler climates… 38 degrees in Frankfurt, 35 in Bruxelles. After a summer like this, I am simply exhausted. I guess we are just not built for this…

Was this a blip? A freak season? Most probably not. How will we make it through the next one?  We need to build resilience. And what better teacher of resilience than Nature? We need to learn from Nature how to build a shield, an umbrella to protect us from the sun. To create gardens around us and gardens above us, in our streets and squares but also on our balconies and roofs, hanging gardens to help us all get through the next heatwave, and the one after that…  And who knows, maybe one tree, one shrub, one plant, one hanging garden at a time, we might get our cities back, our vegetable gardens back and our wells will be full again. 

Simone Borelli

Urban Forestry Officer, Forestry Division, FAO, Rome

Shade. I truly enjoy how shade creates small safety bubbles where you can stop and recharge your energy during extremely hot days. In recent years my Nordic Latvia is turning into Mediterranean Latvia. Now in summertime I plan my way through the streets looking for shadow oasis – trees – trying not to overheat.

Do you know who else likes to spend time in shadow during summer? Fish and all small creatures in the river. You may ask why? Small insight from the underwater world – oxygen dissolves better in colder water than in warmer one. It is very important that some parts of the river are hidden in shadows because then the water doesn’t heat up so extremely and there is a higher chance that this water will contain more oxygen. So, you can say that water creatures also like to stop in the shade and take a rest because they also need oxygen to survive as we – humans – do.

Marta Dievina

Aquatic Biologist, Latvia

high rise

when the heat hits LA and the concrete slab of the city stabs hardened soles of feet whose will they be not the ones sporting horsebit-detailed loafers twenty-six floors above ground level grassroots blue collar laborers steadying their aching bones on scaffolding surrounding new sky rise building waving to washers of windows precariously tethered to the erection next door no it will be the ones heavy weight lifting sweating in swim steel toe boots callous handed down from uncles too big but they’ll grow in to them with time assume the role of the overlooked underpaid scapegoated often deported shorted distorted contorted into funhouse mirror imaginations from windex streaked high rise view can’t help it can’t help but step over unhomed bodies sleeping in office building thresholds can’t help it can’t help but turn away though your pockets are fat as your overfed belly hungry ghosts wandering pondering nothing of consequence i don’t mean to throw shade or stones from my little glass studio but when so many making your life so comfortable come to the one room apartment they call home to their family of six do you not think there might be something amiss or do you just kiss your wives on their rigid lips as you fob the mercedes and narrow your gaze as you make your way between ever expanding encampments damn it there i go again can’t help it can’t help it can’t help i want to write from a higher plane but my re collection only seems to want to gather the fruits that have already fallen to the blistering ground round up our loves and losses and toss them into the great compost heap of mistakes we make when we can’t yet see the We inherent in everything make haste waste not want not but we want so much more not what you have just what is fair weather friends whether you believe it or not it’s happening and there are not enough umbrellas in the world to shade us from the hotheaded hegemony that can’t help it can’t help it just can’t seem to help

Joy Lin Wolfe

Poet, California | IG: @joylinwolfe