Cities are getting hotter, air conditioning is expensive and not everyone has it. Waar Is Airco helps you find the cool places that already exist.
Because of climate change and the urban heat-island effect, temperatures in cities climb sharply on warm days. Stone, asphalt and buildings store heat, making the city noticeably hotter than the green areas around it — both during the day and at night.
Heatwaves are getting longer, more frequent and more intense. For many people — especially the elderly, young children and those in fragile health — that is not just unpleasant but a genuine health risk.
Owning air conditioning is out of reach for many. Buying and installing it is costly, and the electricity it uses pushes up the energy bill. In rented homes a fixed AC unit is often not even an option.
That creates a divide: those who can afford it cool down at home, while those who can’t go looking for relief elsewhere.
The hotter it gets, the more AC units get installed. But air conditioners blow warm air onto the street and consume energy, which heats up the city as a whole. More heat leads to more cooling, which leads to more heat: a vicious circle.
We’re not going to wish air conditioning away — and on a hot day, cooling is sometimes simply needed. But we can be smarter about the cooling that already exists.
Every city has countless public places that are already cooled: libraries, museums, shopping centres, hotel lobbies, cafés and restaurants. That cooling is running anyway. By making those places easy to find, you don’t need to cool down on your own on a hot day — you simply walk to a cool spot nearby.
That’s easier on your wallet, more comfortable on a scorching day, and it eases the vicious circle: we use existing cooling instead of adding new units everywhere.
Waar Is Airco brings public places with air conditioning together on one map, with the current temperature and, per place, whether the AC is confirmed, likely or still unknown. For visitors it’s free.
We launched in Amsterdam with thousands of locations based on open data (OpenStreetMap), enriched by owners and visitors. Other cities are coming.