Left out in the heat? Rethinking urban heat strategies for vulnerable groups

Extreme heat is becoming one of the most direct impacts of climate change on cities worldwide. Record-breaking summer temperatures in 2026 - from Europe to other regions represented at COP31 - have again shown that heat risk is not distributed evenly across the population. Vulnerable groups, such as homeless people, people in adequate settlements or people who face poverty are consistently among those hit hardest, yet they are the groups least likely to be reached by conventional cooling infrastructure or early-warning systems. Homeless people face particularly acute risk: they typically lack access to shaded or cooled shelter, are often excluded by design from public cooling spaces and are harder to reach through standard communication channels during heat emergencies. This is a shared challenge across very different urban and institutional contexts - what varies is how cities have responded, and there is much to learn from comparing approaches. This sessions offers a platform to bring city practitioners, national governments and welfare organisations together around this specific, often under-addressed dimension of urban climate adaptation: protecting the people most exposed to heat and least able to protect themselves.

Speakers and perspectives:

• City of Paris (France) and City of Mannheim (Germany) will present their urban heat action strategies and how they addresses the needs of homeless people and other vulnerable people in practice.

• German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building will outline the national frameworks and current initiatives nationally for addressing urban heat protection for vulnerable groups, with a focus on the homeless population.

• Depaul International will bring international examples from its work with people experiencing homelessness, showing what local heat protection can look like on the ground in different contexts.