Urban heat in the AD: climate justice in Vlaardingen

4 November 2026

Planting more trees is not enough to fight heat. In the AD newspaper, Sylvia Bergh discussed her research in Vlaardingen: who lives in the hottest neighbourhoods, and who benefits from urban greening?

How do you prepare a city for summers of 40 degrees? In Dutch newspaper AD, Sylvia Bergh, senior researcher at the Multilevel Regulation research group, spoke about her research on urban heat. Together with Arka Bhattacharyya and research assistant Lukas van der Wolf (both TU Delft), she stress-tested the urban greening plans of the municipality of Vlaardingen. Using a simulation model, the researchers ran thousands of future scenarios, ranging from extreme heat to budget shortfalls and population growth.

The outcome: planting more trees alone is not enough. Without further greening, densely built neighbourhoods could become up to four degrees warmer than their surroundings during heatwaves. The city centre and the harbour districts are particularly vulnerable. If maintenance falls behind, the cooling effect of green space quickly disappears. The researchers therefore argue that urban green should be treated as infrastructure, just like roads and housing. “It is a long-term challenge, not an afterthought in the budget,” Bergh told the AD.

Who bears the heat?
Heat does not affect everyone equally. Older people, children and people in poor health face the greatest risks, and they often live in the most densely built, least green neighbourhoods. This makes the research a question of justice as well: who benefits from urban greening, and who is left behind?

That question is at the heart of Climate Justice, one of the three research lines within Transition to Sustainability, a theme of The Hague University of Applied Sciences’ knowledge agenda. Sylvia plays a key role in shaping this research line. The Vlaardingen study was partly funded through the Transition to Sustainability knowledge agenda, alongside a Kick-Starter grant from the Resilient Delta Initiative.

For the Centre of Expertise Global and Inclusive Learning, this project shows how practice-based research contributes to a fair and climate-resilient living environment, together with partners such as TU Delft, HeatLab Rotterdam and municipalities. The researchers would like to repeat the study in other municipalities.