The sheets at Exposition Park were a one-day \u201cmicro pilot\u201d with the L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791469099_852_.jpeg\")
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Pop-up shade sails on streetlights in Exposition Park provided shade during USC\u2019s Homecoming weekend, when high temperatures topped 100 degrees.<\/p>\n
(Edith de Guzman)<\/p>\n
Stringing up some quick canopies in response to baking heat seems obvious. But De Guzman said that when it comes to shade, the city has historically focused almost exclusively on tree planting. ShadeLA is promoting a shift in strategy<\/a> to include quick, temporary shade, such as pop-up canopies and tents, plus permanent shade structures, such as bus shelters, that can fill the gaps where trees aren\u2019t growing.<\/p>\n \u201cTrees are still our favorite and preferred way of greening because they bring multiple benefits that built infrastructure really cannot,\u201d said De Guzman, a cooperative extension researcher at UCLA. \u201cBut we\u2019re also very aware of the fact that in some communities, trees are a nonstarter because there isn\u2019t the space.\u201d Trees also take a long time to grow. Ongoing budget cuts to the city\u2019s urban forestry division plus rapidly intensifying heat waves have advocates looking for other solutions.<\/p>\n Canopies, awnings and other forms of \u201cbuilt shade\u201d can be erected immediately, in theory, and still reduce surface temperatures by tens of degrees<\/a>. They don\u2019t actively cool the air the way trees do by releasing water vapor, but with the right materials, they block the sunlight from reaching the ground and make a space feel cooler to be in.<\/p>\n They\u2019ve also been around forever and are part of our shade DNA. In his book \u201cShade: The Promise of Forgotten Natural Resource,\u201d journalist Sam Bloch writes about the tradition dating to early Roman times of erecting porticos and arcades in Mediterranean cities to cool pedestrians in shopping areas and centers of public life. \u201cWhen the Spanish first came to L.A. hundreds of years ago, they did some of that too,\u201d Bloch said.<\/p>\n But with the advent of air conditioning, cars that kept people off the streets, and wide avenues that are harder to sling shade across, we\u2019ve lost the art. Attempts to reincorporate built shade have ranged from the painfully slow<\/a> to the absurdly insufficient (La Sombrita, anyone?<\/a>).<\/p>\n Today in L.A., the average amount of shade at noon from trees and built structures is only 24%<\/a>. There\u2019s less in neighborhoods with high poverty rates and more people of color.<\/p>\n A man heads toward shade at the Hoover Recreation Center, where the playground is draped with a shade canopy.<\/p>\n (Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n You’re reading Boiling Point <\/p>\n The L.A. Times climate team gets you up to speed on climate change, energy and the environment. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a>, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy<\/a> such as personalizing your experience and ads. <\/p>\n Human-made shade does pop up in small pockets across the city, umbrellas outside a restaurant, a playground with UV-protective canopies over the swings, or a health clinic with awnings over its parking lot.<\/p>\n But navigating permitting across different jurisdictions and agencies is complicated, and there\u2019s no one, streamlined way to make it happen in public spaces. \u201cThere\u2019s a standard process for planting trees across Los Angeles, but we don\u2019t have that road map for built shade,\u201d Michelle Barton, ShadeLA\u2019s other co-lead and climate and sustainability director at USC Dornsife Public Exchange said.<\/p>\n To that end, the group is for pushing policy changes<\/a> and working on other small pilots to help the city deploy shade quickly ahead the 2028 Olympics. Last year, it held a student design competition with Los Angeles Metro that resulted in a temporary shade structure<\/a> outside the Downtown Inglewood station. During the World Cup, it erected a big pop-up tent<\/a> at Harvard Park in South L.A. that city parks staff has since used elsewhere. It\u2019s now seeking to build a lending library of such tents.<\/p>\n Bloch said the pilot in Exposition Park last weekend was \u201cproof of concept\u201d for an idea discussed under Mayor Eric Garcetti\u2019s tenure but never brought to life.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not as effective at cooling, but those shade sails are nimble in a way that trees never will be,\u201d Bloch said. \u201cIf the city knows it\u2019s going to be hot, string them up for the week and then take them down. … It should be an attractive option for places trying to quickly shade themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n In other heat news<\/p>\n This week\u2019s heat wave broke October records<\/a> across Southern California, The Times\u2019 Hannah Fry reports. Downtown Los Angeles saw its longest stretch of 100-degree days since recordkeeping began. The heat is driven by a persistent high-pressure ridge over the region that causes sinking warming air with little overnight relief. That\u2019s paired with down-sloping winds and uncharacteristically warm ocean temperatures, driven in part by El Ni\u00f1o, that weaken sea breezes.<\/p>\n The Times\u2019 Rong-Gong Lin II writes that the El Ni\u00f1o-fueled Kelvin wave<\/a> is currently arriving in the Southland. The warm aquatic pulse could add 6 to 12 inches to background sea levels for months and cause flooding if there are storms or high tides, like the swell from distant Hurricane Rachel expected to peak Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n Other climate and environment news<\/p>\n Californians are paying some of the highest water bills<\/a> in the country, writes The Times\u2019 Ian James. A new survey of 500 drinking water utilities around the country found average water bills have gone up 1.6 times as fast as inflation and more than half of the 25 most expensive water systems are in California, including those in San Jos\u00e9, San Francisco, Sacramento and Oceanside.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in Suncor v. Boulder and are weighing whether cities and states like California can sue oil and gas producers<\/a> for the damages caused by climate change. The Times\u2019 David G. Savage reported that justices sounded wary of states\u2019 arguments and suggested their claims might be blocked by federal law.<\/p>\n A study in several commercial kitchens in California, Pennsylvania and New York, found 70% of those with gas appliances<\/a> exposed workers to a lung-damaging pollutant and extreme heat above federal thresholds. None of the restaurants with all-electric kitchens had excessive nitrogen dioxide or heat, reports my colleague Tony Briscoe.<\/p>\n This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more climate and energy news, follow me at @blancabegert<\/a> on Bluesky.<\/p>\n You’re reading Boiling Point <\/p>\n The L.A. Times climate team gets you up to speed on climate change, energy and the environment. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a>, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy<\/a> such as personalizing your experience and ads. <\/p>\n More from Climate California <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It didn\u2019t look like much. Five red and yellow cloth sails, strung up between streetlights in Exposition Park,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1409,20,32318,19931,190984,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,111830,592,14691,21584,190983,1009,8219,20965,430],"class_list":["post-489258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-city","tag-climate","tag-exposition-park","tag-heat-wave","tag-l-a-bureau","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-oral-argument","tag-people","tag-sail","tag-shade","tag-shadela","tag-southern-california","tag-tent","tag-tree-planting","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Some](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791469100_27_.jpeg\")
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