Urban heat as a structural development challenge in rapidly growing cities

Urban heat is increasingly emerging as a major constraint on sustainable development, particularly in rapidly growing cities of the Global South. Although urban heat is commonly addressed through local adaptation and urban heat reduction measures such as urban greening, cool and super cool roofs, and building retrofits or passive design, these interventions are increasingly implemented against a backdrop of accelerating planetary warming, fiscal constraints, and persistent socio-economic inequalities. This Essay argues that urban heat should be understood not merely as an environmental, technological, or urban planning challenge, but as a structural development problem arising from the interaction of climate change, rapid urbanization, uneven governance capacity, and political-economic processes that shape vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Drawing on evidence from urban climate, adaptation, development, and climate justice literatures, we examine how escalating heat risks intersect with infrastructure deficits, debt burdens, limited access to climate finance, and unequal access to cooling resources across rapidly growing cities. We show that climate change mitigation and local action, including urban heat reduction and broader adaptation measures, perform distinct but complementary functions, and that local interventions alone cannot overcome the broader climatic and structural conditions that increasingly constrain their effectiveness and scalability. Urban heat risks are further amplified by profound inequalities in exposure, vulnerability, and access to adaptation resources, creating a widening mismatch between those facing the greatest heat burdens and those possessing the greatest capacity to respond. We, therefore, argue that effective urban heat governance requires moving beyond predominantly local and technocratic approaches toward integrated strategies that combine climate change mitigation, equitable climate finance, enhanced fiscal capacity, and multi-level governance. Reframing urban heat as a structural development challenge provides a more comprehensive framework for addressing climate justice, resilience, and long-term urban habitability under a warming climate.