futureproofing for hot cities, traditional landscape management, new city infrastructure, research and design, lessons for hot cities everywhere

NatureCulture and the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC) at the University of Western Australia have signed a ten-year agreement to research urban forestry for thermal comfort in Gulf cities.

Respect for water runs deep in the Gulf. In classical Arabic, falaj means to divide into shares, and the aflaj of Al Ain, built from the Iron Age, shared scarce water fairly and wasted none. Treated sewage effluent (TSE) networks follow the same principle at city scale.

Internationally, city-wide TSE networks are rare. Almost all research on how trees cool cities comes from rain-watered cities, and the guidance built on it assumes a water supply Gulf cities do not have. Local evidence is thin: a 2026 regional review found that only 16% of thermal comfort studies calibrated comfort thresholds to local conditions.

Starting from Gulf conditions and using new monitoring and modelling technology, the program treats the TSE network as part of the cooling system and asks how much comfort each cubic metre of irrigation water delivers. Comfort yield, the area kept within a target comfort range multiplied by the hours it is kept there, is measured per cubic metre over the life of the planting.

For authorities, this measures the cooling return on water already supplied, and how networks and their governing frameworks can deliver more. Findings from long-term trials on built projects will become a guide calibrated to Gulf cities.

The rest of the world is heading the same way. As rainfall becomes less predictable, more cities will depend on managed irrigation; in 2011, drought killed an estimated 5.6 million urban trees across Texas. The Gulf has managed scarce water for centuries and can lead this research, not import it.

We are inviting a small number of founding partners to host trial sites. Contact laith@natureculture.me.