This Urban Cooling Toolbox provides a collection options to lower urban temperatures and reduce the impact of the urban heat island effect, to inform cities’ actions to adapt to extreme heat as part of climate action planning. 

Each option is presented on a ‘card’, which are designed to be used as facilitation tools in planning workshops.

The cooling options are grouped into six categories:

• Green infrastructure, such as trees, green roofs, green corridors and permeable pavements.
• Blue infrastructure, including drinking fountains, water cooling, public swimming pools, fountains and water bodies.
• Grey infrastructure, such as cool roofs, façade shading, solar window film, cool pavements, and passive cooling in buildings.
• Communications and outreach, including cooling centers, outreach and communications campaigns.
• Policy, which includes climate design guidelines, heat emergency response plan, cooling tax rebate programmes and cool/green roof regulations.
• Urban development, such as urban geometry and building materials.