The
Index.

The Upper West Side’s eastern margin is Central Park West — a mile of pre-war buildings on one side and the park canopy on the other. Three picks that pick the right sidewalk.

McCarren Park anchors a half-mile grid of pre-war low-rises in north Brooklyn. The London plane canopy is mature now. Three picks for the long afternoon.

Long Island City’s waterfront is exposed by definition. The trick is using the high-rise grid two blocks back to walk it cool. Three picks for the Queens side of the river.

Manhattan’s northern end is its quietest and one of its shadiest. Fort Tryon and Inwood Hill Park stay cool when the rest of the island bakes. Three walks for the very top of the city.

Chinatown’s commercial streets were engineered for August. Awnings everywhere, narrow streets, and Doyers Street’s elbow. Three picks for the most consistently shaded few blocks in Lower Manhattan.

Tompkins Square Park has elms, sycamores, and the kind of canopy that doesn’t exist in the rest of downtown. Three walks that use the park as a hub and the avenues as spokes.

SoHo’s cast-iron buildings were built six stories tall on 50-foot lots. The shadow they throw across Greene and Wooster is some of the most reliable cover in lower Manhattan.

The Financial District is a canyon of pre-war stone and post-war glass. The crooked colonial-era streets do something no other Manhattan grid does — they throw shadow at unexpected angles.

Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s lung, and the residential ring around it (Park Slope, PLG, Windsor Terrace) inherits the canopy. Three walks that use both.

Greenwich Village preserves a dozen tiny alleys — Patchin Place, Washington Mews, Milligan Place. Three walks that use them as cool cut-throughs between bigger streets.

The N/W train runs elevated up 31st Street. Its shadow is the most reliable shade in Astoria. Three picks that use the el and the residential canopy.

The Bronx’s Little Italy has six blocks of continuous awning canopy and storefronts that have been sweeping their sidewalks for 100 years. Three picks for the most under-walked food street in NYC.

Park Slope’s 7th Avenue is the long shaded commercial spine of the neighborhood. The brownstone canopy on the cross streets is the supporting cast. Three picks for an unhurried Saturday.

Roosevelt Island is a 2-mile sliver between the boroughs. Both promenades have tree canopy and river breeze. Three picks for the most overlooked summer walk in NYC.

The Manhattan Bridge throws a stripe of shadow southwest across DUMBO from sunrise until about noon. Combined with the brick wall on Water Street, it makes a useful morning grid in a neighborhood with almost no street trees.

Five sub-mile loops through Manhattan’s most reliably shaded block grid — picked for 11 AM to 2 PM, when the sun is sharpest.

A field report from one of the shadiest pockets in Midtown — six bench locations along the elevated walk, with the times each one reads coolest.

The west sidewalk of 5th Avenue between 60th and 96th sits directly under the Central Park tree line. From about 9 AM the canopy spills west across the street — a half-mile of shade that does not exist on any other Manhattan avenue.

The city of Phoenix has built forty-seven engineered shade structures across the downtown core — bus stops, plazas, sidewalk awnings. Used like stepping stones, they make a midday walking grid that didn’t exist a decade ago.

Where to walk when it’s 110°. Five routes picked at 6 AM, when the buildings still own the sidewalks and the city is movable.

Five downtown walks that string together the Pedway, the Rookery’s light court, and the Loop’s ground-floor arcades — for the July weeks when the sidewalks hit 95°.

The narrow east–west streets and old brick keep Beacon Hill a few degrees under the rest of downtown Boston. Six midday walks between Charles Street and the State House.

San Francisco gets called foggy, but the Mission’s flat grid actually bakes in September. Three picks that use the Victorian cornices and the palm-canopy edges to keep you in shade.

Most of the Presidio is forest. The Letterman side is where the fog conditioner runs all afternoon. Three picks for SF’s most reliably cool walking corridor.

On a clear afternoon the Salesforce Tower throws a half-mile shadow northeast across SoMa. Five walks that use it for cover between 2 and 5 PM.

Washington was laid out with shade in mind, even if no one says so. Five lunch walks from the K Street offices that use the broad avenues’ planted medians and east-side building walls.

Capitol Hill’s residential blocks are some of Seattle’s coolest, courtesy of 80-year-old big-leaf maples. Three walks that take you off Pike-Pine before the asphalt remembers June.

Seattle gets ten hot days a year and most of them land in August. Five Capitol Hill and Volunteer Park walks that read coolest from 11 to 4 — the window when the city actually needs them.

The South and North Park Blocks are a 24-block green spine through downtown Portland, almost entirely shaded. Five lunch walks for the office worker.

Silver Lake is hilly and exposed. But the reservoir’s east bank has wind, jacaranda, and a row of pre-war apartments throwing long shadows. Three picks that find the cool half.

The Venice strand is the shade story; everyone forgets Rose Avenue’s ficus tunnel runs parallel one block north. Three picks for the better walk.

Koreatown’s grid is the densest in LA outside downtown. The Mid-Wilshire highrises throw the heaviest building shadow in the basin. Three picks for the cool half of the block.

Fern Dell is Griffith Park’s coolest microclimate — old-growth coast live oak and sycamore over a spring-fed creek bed. Three walks that use it as a cool entrance and exit point.

Larchmont Boulevard’s mature California sycamores hit canopy density rare in central LA. Three picks for the village blocks and the residential streets just east.

Downtown LA’s historic core has pre-war banks 14 stories tall on 60-foot lots. The shadow they throw is the deepest in the basin. Three picks for the old commercial blocks.

The Westside’s quietest walkable grid — sycamores, mid-century cottages, and a marine layer that lingers later than you’d expect. Three picks for the corner of LA most people miss.

Eagle Rock’s commercial corridor runs under a row of 60-year-old camphor and ficus. Three picks for the Northeast LA neighborhood that survived gentrification.

Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco is the LA basin’s underrated cool corridor. Three picks that descend from the city into the riparian shade — full canopy from sycamore and bridge alike.

Palm trees throw almost no shade. Five Westside walks picked for the buildings — the canyons of Wilshire and the apartment shadows along the cross streets of Westwood.

Colorado Boulevard between Pasadena and DeLacey has a near-continuous run of awnings and recessed entries. Combined with the alleys that run parallel, it makes a noon walk that holds.

The Eastside Beltline’s tree canopy plus the warehouse shadows of Old Fourth Ward make a two-mile shaded corridor. Six picks for the 6 to 9 AM window.

Brickell Avenue is a corridor of glass towers — and a corridor of 80-year-old banyans. We map the cool side, block by block, against the actual building geometry.

The window when South Beach is still movable on foot. Five walks between Ocean Drive and Lincoln Road, picked for the hours under 8:30 AM.

The Austin heat strategy is a morning strategy. Five walks down SoCo and along Lady Bird Lake picked for the 7 to 9:30 AM window.

The wrought-iron galleries on Royal and Chartres make a continuous shaded sidewalk through the French Quarter. Five walks for the late-afternoon humidity peak.

Hampstead is older than most of London by 400 years. The lanes are crooked, the trees are large, and the heath takes any afternoon you give it. Three walks for the village.

The South Bank has river breeze, brutalist eaves, and a series of Victorian railway arches that have stayed cool since the 1860s. Three picks that string them together.

London plane trees were planted across Bloomsbury two hundred years ago and they have done their job. Five connected walks through Russell, Bloomsbury, and Tavistock for the July heat.

The downtown tunnel system runs six and a half blocks deep under the Theater District and the financial core — climate-controlled, fluorescent, almost wholly unmarked at street level. A field map.

Klyde Warren Park is five acres of grass built on top of a sunken stretch of Woodall Rodgers — a continuous shaded bridge between Uptown and the Arts District that didn’t exist before 2012.

The River Walk runs twenty feet below street grade through downtown San Antonio. Stone arches, bald cypresses, and the standing water keep it a measurable eight degrees below the streets above. A loop in three acts.

In July the Strip sidewalk hits 118°. The casinos figured this out a long time ago — there is a near-continuous covered route from Aria to Caesars using arcades, sky bridges, and porte cochères. A walking map.

The University of Arizona’s mall and the residential blocks of Sam Hughes are planted with mesquites and palo verdes old enough to have built a real canopy. In a 105° city, that is not a small thing.

Kalakaua Avenue runs along the Waikiki shore. The Diamond Head side of the street catches the trade wind off the channel even at noon — a ten-degree edge over the inland side.

Capitol Park is forty acres of mature canopy around the California State Capitol — London plane trees, valley oaks, and a row of sycamores planted in the 1870s. A museum-row walk for the central valley’s hot stretch.

Late May through mid-June, the Balboa Park jacarandas drop their lavender over the museum row. Six walking routes through the canopy, sequenced for the two weeks the color holds.

Riverside Drive runs along the Mississippi from Mud Island to Tom Lee Park. The inland side has a continuous row of mature cottonwoods — a flat, fully shaded mile, walked south for the morning shadow.

When Nashville issues a heat advisory the downtown sidewalks become unusable by 11. The Cumberland River Greenway is the only flat, shaded mile in the urban core. A field map.

Forest Park is 1,300 acres — bigger than Central Park — and the half-mile around Post-Dispatch Lake is the shadiest. Five entries from the MetroLink stops, picked for the lap before work.

The Country Club Plaza was modeled on Seville in 1922 — Spanish arcades, terra-cotta roofs, forty-seven fountains in fifteen blocks. The result is a measurable micro-climate. A walking map.

The live oaks at the Battery and along Meeting Street were planted as climate infrastructure. They are now two hundred and twenty years old, and on a July afternoon they still do the work air conditioning was invented to replace.

Oglethorpe laid Savannah out in 1733 around a grid of public squares. Twenty-two of them remain, each one its own square block of mature canopy. A walking route that touches eight.

The perimeter trail at Lake Eola is a flat 0.9-mile loop in central downtown Orlando. The west side is shaded by mature live oaks and cypresses — but only before the sun clears the high-rises around 8 AM.

Bayshore Boulevard’s continuous 4.5-mile sidewalk is the longest in the country. The inland side has a planted row of bald cypresses. Walk it south in the morning for the shadow.

Minneapolis built nine and a half miles of climate-controlled second-story walkways for the winter. In August they’re also the cool walk — a parallel city, eighteen blocks long, ten feet above the heat.

Capitol Hill sits a hundred feet above the Salt Lake valley floor. Memorial Grove, the State Street sycamores, and the descent itself put together a continuous shaded afternoon walk down to South Temple.

The Cherry Creek Trail runs along both banks of the creek through central Denver. The mature cottonwoods are on the north bank — but the shade you actually get depends on which side you’re walking, and what time you started.

Belle Isle Park sits in the Detroit River. The 5.5-mile perimeter road is partly canopied by old elms and silver maples. Walked counter-clockwise before 9 AM, while the river haze still holds.

Rittenhouse Square’s London plane trees were planted in 1913 and are now the densest urban canopy in the Northeast. Stitched together with the colonial arcades around Independence Hall, they make a continuous mile of cover across Center City.

Madrid built Malasaña tall and narrow. The 19th-century blocks are six stories of stone facing two-meter streets. The result: full building shadow from 11 AM until almost sunset.

Spain’s heat strategy starts at 7 AM. Six picks through Retiro’s plane-tree avenues and the Crystal Palace path, all graded for the hour before the sun owns Madrid.

Everyone walks the sunny one anyway. Five lunch walks across central Madrid that pick the right sidewalk and stop at a terraza that gets it right.

Gràcia stayed its own village until 1897, and the street grid still says so. Narrow lanes, plaza after plaza, awnings, and the planes have grown tall enough to matter.

Cerdà’s chamfered corners weren’t just for trams — they cut diagonal shade lines through the Eixample. A grid walk that uses every one of them.

Alfama’s medieval stairs run mostly east-west and most of them never see direct light. A walking route that ladders up the hill through the shadow.

Pantheon to Piazza Navona using only the porticos and the deep shadows of the papal buildings. A walking route built for the 2 PM Roman heat.

Whitewashed walls double the morning shade in the old quarter. A walking route up to the Acropolis that stays cool until ten.

The Kapalıçarşı is the obvious shade. The walk to it through the courtyards of the Süleymaniye is the unobvious one.

The Jaffa flea market is engineered to be walked at 90°F. Awnings, jasmine vines, and stone walls do the work. Three picks for the southern end of the city.

Boulevard Rothschild’s ficus canopy and the kiosk shade-and-coffee chain. A 1.2-mile walk that holds from end to end.

The Khan el-Khalili’s covered alleys and the surrounding Mamluk-era qaisariyas. A walking route through the longest continuously inhabited shaded market on earth.

DIFC was engineered for outdoor walking in summer — second-floor podiums shaded by tower overhangs above. Three picks that connect the financial district to the metro without breaking the sweat barrier.

DIFC’s air-conditioned skyways and the Gate Avenue corridor. A walking route through the financial district that stays the same temperature all year.

The Queen’s Necklace catches the sea breeze before sunrise. A 2.5-mile walk along the curve before the heat lands.

The park’s perimeter under the rain trees is the only continuous shade in central Bangkok past nine in the morning.

Marina Bay is engineered to be walked covered. The arcades, the underground links, and the conservatory bridges form a continuous indoor-outdoor corridor. We map it.

Orchard Road’s covered walkways are mandatory by code. A 1.5-mile route from Bras Basah to Ion that never crosses an open sidewalk.

Yanaka survived the war and the bubble. The result: a north-Tokyo neighborhood where the walls of 70 temples cast the geometry the buildings can’t. Three picks under cherry, ginkgo, and tile.

Shimokitazawa is Tokyo’s most pedestrian-only quarter — three blocks of awning-covered shopping lanes that turn the whole neighborhood into a covered grid in summer.

Aoyama-dōri’s keyaki form a one-kilometer green tunnel from Omotesandō to Aoyama-itchōme. Best at 2 PM in August, when the geometry has to work.

Yanaka’s surviving prewar streets and the temple compounds’ borrowed canopy. A forty-minute walk through old Tokyo.

Seoul’s Bukchon hanok village is preserved precisely because nothing was rebuilt — including the 18th-century street widths. Three picks that use the wall-and-tile geometry the way it’s designed.

Filed the week Seoul went deep on Stay Cool. South of the river, the shadow that matters isn’t an eave — it’s a 35-story apartment block, and Koreans have been thinking about its orientation since the 1970s.

Bukchon Hanok Village’s tile-roof alleys at midday — the eaves overhang the street by a meter, doing the work.

Hyde Park to the Royal Botanic Gardens via Macquarie Street. A twenty-five-minute walk under Moreton Bay figs.

Melbourne’s inner-north has the laneways and the plane trees. Three picks for walking Brunswick Street and the back blocks without the western sun.

The 6 km perimeter trail of Royal Park. Eucalyptus and sugar gum cover, plus the wind off Princes Park.

South Bank Parklands’ rainforest walk and the Streets Beach perimeter. A short route that uses the bougainvillea arbour for cover.

Roma Norte’s ahuehuete and fresno canopy is the densest street-tree cover in CDMX. A walking route through the cafés that uses it.

Palermo’s jacaranda fall in November is brief; the canopy peaks in week three. A walking route timed to the bloom.

Malecón Cisneros runs the bluff above the Pacific. Sea breeze for five kilometers; the trick is which direction to walk it.

The oak avenue of Government Avenue and the Company’s Garden. A walking route from the Slave Lodge to the National Library.

University Avenue’s median planting and the King’s College Circle oaks. A north–south walk through the U of T spine.

Mont Royal’s eastern slope holds afternoon shade until five. The Olmsted trail from Avenue du Parc up to the chalet.

Amsterdam’s canal grid runs east–west — which means one side is shaded all morning and the other all afternoon. Three walks that know which side is which.

The Tiergarten’s eastern margin is where the lindens get serious. Three picks that swap Brandenburg-tour heatstroke for a real green corridor.

Île Saint-Louis is small enough that you can pick a side and commit. Three walks that pick the shaded quay and stay on it.

The Marais has Paris’s narrowest streets, oldest Jewish quarter, and the Place des Vosges arcade — a continuous covered colonnade from the 17th century. Three walks that use it.

Seville’s Santa Cruz is built to be walked at 110°F. The buildings touch overhead. Three picks that use the old Jewish-quarter geometry the way it was designed.

Vancouver’s Stanley Park Seawall is famous; nobody tells you the western half bakes after 11 AM in July. Three picks that finish before the sun finds you.

Vancouver’s east side has the canopy the west coast forgets it built. Three picks under the big-leaf maples for the long summer evenings.

Palm Springs in July is two weather systems: 6 AM and 6 PM. Three walks for the cool half, all under the date palms the city was named for.

The banyans on Las Olas Boulevard are five blocks long and four lanes wide. Three picks that know which side of the road they belong on.

Jacksonville’s Riverside survived sprawl. The result: 30 walkable blocks of pre-war bungalows under 200-year-old live oaks. Three picks for the months when the river goes 90°.

Charlotte built more pedestrian arcades than any Sun Belt city in the last 20 years. Three picks that string them together for a half-mile of covered walking.

A suburb built around the car ought to be unwalkable at noon. The greenways say otherwise. Three picks through the live-oak gaps the master plan left behind.