Rapid urban growth and rising global temperatures have made extreme heat a growing problem in cities, and the burden is not shared equally. Low‑income and otherwise vulnerable communities are often the most affected. While many studies have shown that parks, trees, and other green features can increase property values — a benefit sometimes called the “green premium” — far less attention has been paid to the downside of urban heat.
This “urban heat penalty” refers to how exposure to extreme heat can lower home values. Understanding this issue matters because housing markets may quietly discount homes in hotter, underserved neighborhoods, reinforcing existing social and environmental inequalities.
In this presentation, Meen Wook Juna will share the findings of a study focused on the relationship between land surface temperature and housing sales data in Philadelphia from 2015 to 2019. By integrating property transaction records with satellite-derived thermal data and employing multi-level modeling with random intercepts and random slopes, she examined 1) the magnitude of the heat penalty’s negative impact on housing prices; 2) the exacerbating role of neighborhood social vulnerability, where heat-induced depreciation is significantly more pronounced in marginalized neighborhoods than in affluent ones; and 3) the financial impact of this penalty, which has increased over time and has grown faster in socially marginalized communities over the study period.
The study findings suggest that housing market dynamics may act as a mechanism of climate injustice, underscoring the urgent need for targeted cooling interventions in socially marginalized neighborhoods.
About the speaker
Meen Wook Jung is a PhD candidate in the city and regional planning section of the Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture, where his research covers the distributive equity of urban heat and green infrastructure for climate justice. He specializes in computational urban microclimate simulation, agent-based modeling, and geographic information systems, and their empirical application to environmental and green infrastructure planning. He holds a master of community and regional planning from Iowa State University and a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea.
Part of the Spring 2026 GIS Seminar Series hosted by the Department of Urban Planning and Development, this seminar is open to all Iowa State students, faculty, and staff. Contact Professor Monica Haddad, haddad@iastate.edu, to express interest in attending and to receive the link to the online event.