URBAN SHADE

Crafting community resilience through creative reuse

The planet is getting warmer and it is felt most intensely in urban areas with impervious surfaces and more frequently by communities of color and those with economic instability.

Imagine walking down Division Street in July.  It’s 90+ degrees, the sun is beating down and the air is as still as a mountain. You're surrounded by nothing but blacktop and buildings, all absorbing and radiating the heat of the day. You're sweating and uncomfortable and just need a place to cool off and rest before continuing to your destination. 

Up ahead you spot a colorful structure, under which you see dappled light. You head towards it and as you get closer you see butterflies, hundreds of colorful butterflies, hanging from a the wings of an enormous monarch butterfly sculpture. It’s the oasis you were seeking.  Underneath this butterfly canopy it’s cooler, the intensity of the sun is broken, you can breathe a little easier and cool down.

This is the experience we seek to create with Urban Shade. Oases in neighborhoods that need it the most.

We are seeking artists, engineers and
community leaders to join the project.

Interested? Fill out this form.

This project draws on data from the Beat the Heat study produced by the Gonzaga Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment that identified specific communities in Spokane as “highly impacted” by heat.