‘Smart Surfaces’ Report Highlights Effects of Infrastructure on Local Climate

In July 2024, a coalition of community scientists, UNC Charlotte researchers and community organizations dubbed the Charlotte Heat Mappers released an interactive heat map showing that the city’s highest heat indexes were concentrated within a long and narrow urban corridor stretching along South Boulevard, through Uptown and into NoDa along North Tryon Street.

“Along this corridor, a combination of building materials like asphalt, cement, and steel absorb a large amount of the Sun’s energy and store it as heat,” read the Heat Mappers’ report. “This area has relatively few trees and lacks the kinds of vegetated green spaces that could help to cool it down.” 

A new analysis of Charlotte’s urban landscape by the Smart Surfaces Coalition has reiterated these findings, documenting the ways that certain infrastructure — roofs, roadways and parking lots, for example — affects the immediate climate, raising temperatures by as much as 14 degrees in some areas of the city. 

Conducted by the nonprofit Smart Surfaces Coalition, this latest comprehensive review of surface infrastructure in Charlotte concludes that the city’s many dark, impervious surfaces absorb up to 95% of incoming solar radiation, heating up the city dangerously in certain areas during summer months and exacerbating flooding issues. 

The analysis suggests that implementing more “smart surfaces” such as trees, green stormwater infrastructure, porous and permeable pavements, and reflective roofs and roads could reduce peak summer air temperatures by 3.1 to 6.6 degrees in hot Charlotte neighborhoods and help manage stormwater runoff.

The city has partnered with the Smart Surfaces Coalition to identify the city’s hottest and most flood-prone pockets and adopt solutions to mitigate extreme heat and stormwater flooding.

“Working with the Smart Surfaces Coalition has allowed us to further our progress toward meeting the city’s sustainability goals, as outlined in the Strategic Energy Action Plan Plus,” stated Mayor Vi Lyles in a release from the city on Tuesday. “This work is critical, especially for our most vulnerable communities, and it is energizing to collaborate with a group equally as passionate about preserving our environment.”

According to Charlotte’s Chief Resilience & Sustainability Officer Heather Bolick, the city has already been implementing smart-surface solutions such as cool roofs, solar panels and tree preservation through programs like the city’s Sustainable Facilities Policy, the Green Source Advantage program, and most recently the Solarize Charlotte-Mecklenburg campaign, which launched in June. 

“The Smart Surfaces Coalition has been a great resource in quantifying the impacts of the built environment on our community as a whole and has assisted us in prioritizing areas of the city to focus,” Bolick said.

Some of the city’s specific programming around smart surfaces was part of the May 2025 adoption by Charlotte City Council of the Strategic Energy Action Plan Plus, an update to the original sustainability plan that includes strategies focused on buildings, energy generation, transportation and cross-sectional issues including tree canopy preservation and extreme urban heat mitigation, according to the release. 

“Designing healthier cities is paramount in the reality of our rapidly warming world. Outdated, heat-trapping surfaces put millions at risk — especially in underserved neighborhoods,” stated Georges C. Benjamin, MD, executive director, American Public Health Association. 

The 2024 Charlotte Heat Mappers project found that low-income communities and communities of color experience the compound effects of higher levels of air pollution, exposure from vehicular traffic and industry, and less tree canopy and green space. 

Studies have linked higher temperatures to historical planning practices like redlining, contributing to worse health outcomes, especially when combined with social vulnerabilities, according to the report. 

In Charlotte, that has manifested in the “Crescent” and the “Wedge,” in which the urban geography of the city can be divided into two zones segregated by race, wealth and access to resources.

“Understanding urban heat disparities across Charlotte’s Crescent and Wedge would help to inform a more equitable approach to heat mitigation policy development and implementation,” reads the 2024 Charlotte Heat Mappers report.