Energy Poverty and Irradiated Shade in the US-Mexico Borderland

With the effects of climate change, urbanizing cities throughout the US–Mexico borderlands will face increased levels of solar radiation in the coming decades, impacting energy demand for urban infrastructure and building operations, exacerbating conditions of energy poverty, and increasing the exposure of large and growing urban populations to harmful levels of UVB radiation in public space. Communities in the Chihuahuan Desert face disproportionate levels of energy poverty. Urban morphologies in this region impose disproportionate energy demands, especially within underserved urban communities (Diaz-Barriga & Barnhart, 2022). Recommendations to reduce energy poverty include strategies to increase the amount of urban shade, lowering the energy demand both for building operations and transportation.

The presentation will reveal the emerging geography of public shade in the borderland both as a response to energy poverty and as a geography susceptible to unseen dangers. Populations in arid environments are exposed to high levels of ultraviolet radiation, even within conditions of apparent shade. As arid cities work to increase the amount of public shade, conditions of “irradiated shade” arise as subperceptual phenomena, producing hidden geographies requiring new methods, tools, forms of representation, and forms of public engagement to visualize, analyze, and engage.