This is one of the stories Emma Bacon, Executive Director and Founder of Sweltering Cities, hears through her work with communities experiencing rising temperatures. Across Western Sydney, people are making daily adjustments to manage the heat.
The region already has one of the most severe urban heat island effects in the country. During heatwaves, temperatures can be 8–10°C higher than Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Western Sydney currently experiences an average of 15.4 days per year above 35°C, with climate models projecting that could rise to 52 days by 2090.
“There’s this sense of dread,” Emma explains. “How am I going to afford to turn on air conditioning? Am I going to have to get up at four a.m. to do the gardening because it’ll be too hot otherwise? How am I going to get my kids to school and back?”
These everyday experiences guide the work of Sweltering Cities, Australia’s only national advocacy organisation working specifically on extreme heat. The team brings people together to develop and advocate for solutions that protect the health and wellbeing of their communities.
Dusseldorp Forum supports this work through our membership of Groundswell Giving, which backed Sweltering Cities at an important early stage.
Listening to what communities want
Sweltering Cities starts by asking people about their experiences and what would help.
The answers have taken the team into conversations about housing, electricity bills, public transport, swimming pool opening hours and the design of neighbourhoods.
People know where shade is missing, which rooms become unbearable and how a hot walk to the bus stop affects their day. They also see opportunities to make things better.
Emma hears that people want their communities and their needs to be prioritised, and to be listened to about what they want. That might mean longer opening hours at the pool, better public transport or better quality housing.
Governments sometimes describe these changes as too hard or too expensive, Emma says, but communities are already paying the cost through inaccessible public transport and poorly insulated homes that mean higher electricity bills in summer and winter.
People feel frustrated that those making decisions don’t care about people in hot suburbs, particularly when so many of these problems are fixable.
“Having more trees is a fixable problem,” Emma says. “Having standards for rentals is a fixable problem.”
For Emma, this points to a problem of politics, priorities and power. Sweltering Cities works with people to make communities more visibly powerful and shift the political equation.
From community concerns to practical change
One concern that comes up repeatedly is the lack of shelter at bus stops.
For people relying on public transport, waiting in the sun can make it difficult to get to work, appointments or the shops. A shaded place to wait helps people make these everyday journeys safely.
When Sweltering Cities began campaigning for better bus shelters in Western Sydney, Emma says government agencies and councils told them the problem could not be solved. State government would not pay, and local councils did not have the money.
Community members, partners and allies kept raising the issue over several years.
“Earlier this year, we secured $1.5 million for more bus shelters in Western Sydney,” Emma says. Penrith Council is now installing new shelters this summer with that funding.
“This is a tangible line between communities raising it with us, doing that campaigning together, convincing the state government that it is their responsibility to have accessible transport for people to get around in summer.”
In Victoria, Sweltering Cities has also worked alongside renters and partner organisations to advocate for cooling and insulation in minimum rental standards.
By 2030, all Victorian renters will have access to energy efficient cooling, Emma explains. The Victorian Government has also announced subsidies for ceiling insulation. These are practical improvements that will make a significant difference in people’s homes.
With the NSW Government considering minimum rental standards, Emma is optimistic about the momentum for change. The more states improve their standards, the more others will be encouraged to follow.
Telling the true story of summer
Sweltering Cities helps people share their experiences with the media, decision-makers and their communities, so reporting on extreme heat reflects what is happening in people’s homes and neighbourhoods.
“When it’s really unbearably hot, let’s not put pictures of people exercising at the beach.”
Instead, Emma wants people who can speak about the impacts on their families, pets and communities to be heard. Sharing these experiences also helps people see that others are facing similar problems, and that they can work together to change them.
Bringing community expertise together
This summer, Sweltering Cities will support people in Western Sydney to organise ways of helping each other through the heat. What that looks like will be guided by what people want to do.
Emma says people in the West understand the day-to-day health, financial and social impacts of heat that others don’t necessarily see. There is also incredible resilience and adaptation, with local councils and the health system, from GPs to hospitals, working to keep people safe.
Some of the most creative policy work on heat is coming out of the West, she says, informed by an understanding of the daily exhaustion and who is most affected, including older people, people with disabilities, young babies and people with chronic illnesses.
The team is also planning its first National Community Heat Summit in Western Sydney in February 2027, bringing together people from across the country, including Central Australia and Far North Queensland.
“We’re locating the expertise in Western Sydney,” Emma says.
Sweltering Cities’ goal is to prevent heatwaves from becoming disasters, protecting people from illness and death even as the heat gets worse. Emma sees the most effective solutions coming from communities helping to create and drive them, with a say in how their cities are designed, built and resourced.
“We are not waiting to be consulted, we are demanding to have leadership.”
Learn more about the work of Sweltering Cities.
Images courtesy of the Sweltering Cities website.
