News | Torched LA | August 2026

Hot or Not? World Cup edition

ShadeLA, the new coalition I wrote about last year, is focused on pilot projects in three LA communities they’ve identified as particularly vulnerable to the impacts of heat and megaevents: South LA, East LA, and Inglewood.

So I invited two of ShadeLA’s experts — UCLA’s Edith de Guzman and USC’s Michelle Barton — to evaluate the shade interventions I saw at this summer’s tournament to explain why each of these attempts at optimizing thermal comfort are hot (derogatory) or not (complimentary).