Designing Indian Cities for Extreme Heat: Landscape as Urban Infrastructure

Introduction: Heatwaves Are Now a Design Brief

Every summer, Indian cities break their own temperature records. Streets shimmer, parks empty out by noon, and public spaces become hostile for anyone without a car or AC. Extreme heat is no longer a rare event—it is the new background condition we are designing in.

As landscape and urban designers, we believe heat is not just a climate story; it is an infrastructure story. The way we plant trees, shape streets, manage water, and specify materials can either amplify the urban heat island—or quietly cool it.

Heat in Indian Cities: More Than Just a Number

In Delhi NCR, Jabalpur, Bangalore and other cities we work in, heat is wrapped up with hard, reflective surfaces, sparse tree cover, stored daytime heat, broken shade, and zero-infiltration paving. When we design only for roads, parking, and building footprints, we ignore a powerful toolset for cooling: landscape.

• Endless concrete, granite, and metal that store and radiate heat
• Sparse or poorly placed tree cover along streets and plazas
• Materials that release heat late into the night, keeping neighbourhoods hot
• Fragmented pockets of shade instead of continuous shaded routes
• Surfaces that repel rainwater instead of letting it soak and cool the soil

Bandhavgarh landscape: layered native planting that cools and restores the forest edge micro-climate.

Landscape as Cooling Infrastructure

Landscape is often treated as an afterthought—something green to be “added” once the building and roads are done. In reality, it can function as a distributed cooling system running across the city.

• Shade trees as micro-climate machines along streets, plazas, and building edges
• Permeable, planted ground instead of dark, continuous blacktop
• Water edges and rills that cool adjacent spaces when paired with planting and airflow
• Wind corridors created by aligning openings, setbacks, and tree placement with prevailing winds

Lessons from Our Work

In Bandhavgarh, along the forest fringes, dense native planting and layered canopy re-created forest edge conditions, naturally cooling the site while supporting biodiversity. At Vastrapur Lake, shaded seating loops, vegetated buffers and gentle topography make the waterfront usable beyond early morning and late evening.

At Haldiram in Modi Mall, Noida, micro-climate design directly supports commercial goals: non-slip, light-toned paving that stays cooler, shade along approach routes, and drainage that avoids waterlogging and “kichad” even during storms.

Five Principles for Heat-Resilient Indian Cities

• Start with shade, not shrubs—tree canopy planning should lead the brief.
• Design for 1 pm in May, not 7 pm in December—test sections and materials for peak heat.
• Use water carefully and visibly—well-designed, well-aerated water bodies paired with shade and seating.
• Let soil breathe—maximise permeable surfaces to cool cities and support groundwater.
• Measure comfort, not just temperature—consider shade, breeze, glare, surface temperature, and time-of-day use.

Conclusion: Cooling Is a Design Choice

Indian cities will continue to get hotter. But how hot our streets, plazas, campuses, and housing edges feel is not inevitable. It is the result of thousands of design decisions about trees, pavements, water, and built form.

When we treat landscape as infrastructure, we gain a quiet, resilient toolkit to cool cities beautifully and affordably. At Ukiyo Habitat, this is the lens we bring to every project—from forest edges to food courts, from residential complexes to public lakes.