The Green at the Science Museum of Virginia, seen in summer 2024 (Photo courtesy Science Museum of Virginia)
The Science Museum of Virginia’s front lawn, named The Green, has plants for pollination, slopes for collecting rainwater, tall grass for muffling the sound of traffic and young trees for a variety of animals to call home. Underneath those trees, another benefit of The Green is forming for future use: shade.
“These trees — they’re smaller now, but when they grow up, this walkway is going to be so nice,” says Jennifer Guild, the museum’s communications director. “People can come out here and sit and enjoy.”
In the museum’s neighborhood of Scott’s Addition and nearby neighborhood of Jackson Ward, heat is an issue. From 2016 until 2022, emergency medical service paramedics responded to more heat-related illness in Scott’s Addition and Jackson Ward than in any other Richmond neighborhoods, according to research published in June 2024 by city and state health officials and University of Richmond researchers.
Organizations and city departments have developed multiple plans to provide relief from heat throughout the city. Ideas range from building more urban green spaces to using more heat-reflective surfaces, but some solutions have complications.
More Green Spaces
Some organizations have proposed using nature to cool people off.
Richmond’s city-wide development plan, called Richmond 300, calls for reducing within Scott’s Addition the heat island effect — a phenomenon in which buildings and roads raise temperatures where greenery is limited — as well as developing and funding parks in the nearby Diamond District. The Jackson Ward section of Richmond 300 says city officials should determine if a park can be built over interstates 95 and 64 in the neighborhood. It’s unclear when those developments and decisions will be made, but the plan’s introduction says it articulates a vision for Richmond in 2037.
The Jackson Ward Community Plan also calls for using lighter-colored roofs that absorb less heat and creating more space for nature in the neighborhood.
The RVAgreen 2050 Climate Equity Action Plan, developed by Richmond’s Office of Sustainability, suggests initiatives like making a city-wide heat island reduction plan by this year and a plan for adding vegetation and heat-reflective materials on roofs by 2030.
According to RVAgreen 2050’s website, 24 of the plan’s 136 proposed actions have been completed, 47 are in progress, 32 are in planning stages and 33 have not been started, as of Jan. 3. The office is planning to launch a detailed, interactive tracker listing more information, according to Director of Sustainability Laura Thomas.
The office is also brainstorming what the heat island reduction plan should look like and how the implementation tracker will be launched, she says. The plan will especially help Jackson Ward and other historically discriminated neighborhoods, Thomas adds. “We look at not just where climate impacts are the greatest, but who is also the most vulnerable and most capable at adapting to it,” she says.
Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities is designing a Parks Master Plan that will implement many of the Office of Sustainability’s environment initiatives, including ensuring that every Richmonder is no more than 10 minutes away from a park. In the past, developers have prioritized concrete and industry over shade and greenery in Scott’s Addition and Jackson Ward, according to Jeremy Hoffman, an SMV scientist and one of the researchers of the 2024 study. While there is a park and many large trees in Jackson Ward, Hoffman says it has a lot of structures that amplify heat because the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation redlined it in 1937, withholding home-loan funds or insurance because it was considered a poor economic risk. Scott’s Addition, he says, has historically been used for industrial purposes.
“You [often] have wide streets, short buildings and no trees,” Hoffman says, “so you don’t get any shade from the buildings. You don’t get any shade from the trees and so you wind up with a bunch of hot temperatures in those particular neighborhoods.”
In Scott’s Addition, some residents have already converted alleys and roads to green spaces. Members of the Greater Scott’s Addition Association created Rosemoore Pocket Park in 2020, according to Hoffman, who is also chair of the association’s livability committee. Members have been planting new trees throughout the area with help from Groundwork RVA, the local chapter of a national nonprofit that helps communities combat climate change.
“I’m confident, and I know that the Greater Scott’s Addition Association is confident in this, too, that the transformation we’ll see over the next decade is going to be fundamental and really for the better for our area,” he says.
Cooling on the Go
The Greater Richmond Transit Company’s plans to add more shelters and benches to bus stops may provide additional heat relief.
Shade from bus stops with shelters or a nearby tree can reduce surface temperatures by between 20 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, according to RVA Rapid Transit’s December report on bus station heat.
To address this, GRTC has proposed installing 160 new shelters and between 225 and 635 new benches at its bus stops, according to its infrastructure installation plan.
There are 112 bus stops in Jackson Ward and Scott’s Addition. At least 53 of them lack a bench, and at least 76 of them don’t have a shelter, according to the plan, which only lists 80 of the 112 stops in the neighborhoods. GRTC spokesperson Henry Bendon did not respond to an email asking about the discrepancy.
In its 2024 State of Transit report, RVA Rapid Transit calls for lighter-colored benches. RVA Rapid Transit Executive Director Faith Walker says the current black benches absorb too much heat. “If somebody did want to sit down, their butt would burn because the materials they’re using [to make the benches] are too hot,” she says.
Bendon says the color of the black shelters and benches in Richmond are determined by the city’s urban design committee, but the organization could move to lighter colors in the future. “Everything’s on the table,” he says. “That’s a cool idea.”
