A heatwave is forecast for Sydney. Scorching daytime temperatures roll into muggy sleepless nights. We bunker down, close the blinds, ration the cooling, and alter our plans for the day. The heatwave this January is declared as the most intense since the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires, a catastrophic fire season that severely impacted biodiversity, wildlife, and human health.
I’m reminded of my penultimate year of high school during Black Summer: weeks of waking to a red sun, a heavy haze, and smoke that filled our lungs and flared my asthma. I’d arrive at school already exhausted, only to sit in classrooms without air-conditioning and gather in common areas that had no shade. That summer, the students of The Ponds High School, a school in a rapidly growing suburb of Blacktown, were agitated and restless. The teachers were equally so.
I envied my friends whose parents let them stay home, and those who had classes in the demountables. The temporary classrooms, and their sudden arrival on our playgrounds, signalled a school already stretched beyond capacity, but at least these rooms were equipped with air-conditioning. Our lunchtime conversations oscillated between worries about the HSC, holiday plans, our MIA prime minister in Hawai‘i, and the absurdity of building a school, in a suburb that regularly experiences multiple 40 degrees Celsius days, without safe, cool classrooms.
When the bell rang, we’d walk down our hot, treeless street, sticky uniforms clinging to our backs, only to wait for the bus at a stop with no protection from the sun. Pushed to the edge of exhaustion from the smoke and heat, we crouched behind what little shade we could find. As five minutes of waiting stretched into ten, then fifteen, we hoped that, unlike yesterday, the bus would only be delayed and not fail to show up at all. These were the sweaty summers of the West.
It’s always hotter out West
It’s a given that Western Sydney is hotter. Geographically, we sit in a floodplain that traps hot air and are further away from the cool coastal breezes that grace the suburbs of the east. But this heat is also a product of the way we urbanise and build our suburbs. Just like the demountables encroaching on our school playground, new developments are sprawling across the west. Dark surfaces, from roofs to roads, absorb sunlight during the day and release it at night. Endless grey blocks replace farmland and vegetation, reducing shade and natural cooling.
Together, these factors contribute to Western Sydney experiencing temperatures often 10 degrees hotter than the leafy, wealthier suburbs of the east. This temperature difference, combined with demographic data on socioeconomic status, health conditions, age, and housing quality, is used to determine heat vulnerability across Sydney. As the splash of red in the map below highlights, areas in Western Sydney are some of the city’s most heat vulnerable.
This urban transformation doesn’t just heat up our cities; it reshapes the social fabric of our communities. Marsden Park, for example, was built without many of the critical community spaces families rely on, whether that’s libraries, strong public transport connections, swimming pools, or schools that can accommodate the area’s growing population. As appealing as its IKEA and Costco may be, we are housing new families in car-reliant, treeless neighbourhoods, often located far from economic and employment centres. Decades of underinvestment in our health system, community centres, arts, and public transport mean essential services haven not kept pace with the West’s rapid growth –– and this manifests in how we experience the heat.
Not just a discrete, one-off weather event
Climate science proves that heatwaves are getting hotter, longer, more humid, more frequent, and more deadly. Already, heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest environmental disaster, causing more fatalities than storms, fires, and floods combined. From sweltering temperatures and skyrocketing energy bills, to the rising cases of heat-related illnesses like heatstroke –– Western Sydney is, and will continue to be, one of the most heat-impacted regions in the country. And as my memories of Black Summer remind me, it’s not just the heat that we feel more acutely. During that Summer, Western Sydney experienced some of the highest concentrations of smoke and the worst air quality, compared to coastal Sydney.
The period of the Black Summer bushfires was formative for me, as they were for many other young people, who were marching and striking for stronger climate action. That summer showed how cascading climate risks –– from heatwaves to fires —disproportionately impact Western Sydney, affecting our health and our ability to study, work, move, and play. It acted as a catalyst for me eventually joining Sweltering Cities: a national advocacy organisation working to create sustainable, equitable, and liveable cities for all. The organisation was formed in Western Sydney in response to the community impacts of heatwaves.
Who gets to stay cool?
The solutions for cooling our suburbs must tackle some big questions: who has the access and privilege to stay cool? How do we shift the conversation away from portraying heatwaves as just another day at the beach that’s typical of an Aussie summer? To make safe, cool homes and cities the norm, we first must interrogate how extreme heat in Western Sydney is shaped by infrastructure, politics, and power.
The phenomena of rising temperatures is a global threat that is felt on every continent. Coalitions of health, policy, science, and planning experts, along with community advocates, are coming together to devise solutions that help us beat the heat. The impacts of heat, however, are far from equal. Those most exposed in Western Sydney include older people living alone, low-income households, people without access to cooling, renters who can’t modify their homes, outdoor workers, people with chronic illness or disability, and migrant communities who encounter language barriers in accessing support and heat-safety information. First Nations communities also face intersecting risks from inadequate housing and energy insecurity.
At Sweltering Cities, we hear daily from people living through extreme heat, showing just how deeply it intersects with structural inequality. Manual labourers, like tradies and food delivery drivers, work in unsafe, overheated conditions, with limited health and safety protections during heatwaves. Meanwhile, others live in hot homes, grappling with impossible and ever-increasing cost of living pressures.
Renters and people living in public housing tell us how poor insulation, lack of ventilation, and unreliable fans leave them trapped in consecutive sleepless hot nights. For those with air conditioning, running it can be too costly, with fears of skyrocketing bills forcing people to risk their health just to avoid energy stress. Families sometimes go without food and limit their grocery purchases, just so they can turn on the air conditioner.
Community stories like these constantly remind us that addressing the crisis of rising temperatures isn’t confined to policy or science room. It’s also not a distant threat that we can wait and prepare for, but something being felt right now, in places like Western Sydney.
Bold solutions
Ensuring that everyone can not only survive, but thrive, in our shared climate future means solutions that foreground equity, dignity, and real power for communities.
I used to think heat refuges were the answer for people without cooling at home, like libraries and community spaces open during heatwaves. Many councils now run cool spaces programs to support residents through extreme heat. But they are only a short-term response; a temporary balm for the dangerous, rising heat in our homes and suburbs.
A solution grounded in equity would look like minimum rental standards that give renters the ability to ask for safer, cooler homes and actually have those needs met. New South Wales currently does not have any rental laws for heating or cooling. Beyond fans and air-conditioning, even small, common-sense measures like blinds and sun- protective flyscreens to block the sun and let in ventilation, are often out of reach under our current rental laws. Renters frequently tell us they feel powerless when requests are denied by landlords and as a result, thousands of renters across the state are living in dangerously hot homes.
We know change is possible. Victoria, for example, recently introduced standards for cooling and insulation. This was the direct result of sustained community pressures, from petitions, submissions at policy inquiries, and citizen science projects where renters measured just how hot their homes can get. With rental prices and stress rising in Western Sydney, there is no reason why cooling shouldn’t be mandatory in NSW rental laws.
These solutions also operate at the hyper-local level. Catching public transport on a hot day should never be a health hazard. A community-led mapping project of Sydney bus stops found that the West has far fewer stops with adequate protection –– this is yet another example of unequal investment in public transport infrastructure. Ensuring bus stops across the hot suburbs of Western Sydney are shaded and sheltered with seating can prevent people from exposure to dangerous heat.
Dreaming our climate future
It often feels like action on climate is stalling, as are truly progressive policies. Still, I believe an equitable, heat-resilient Western Sydney is possible, largely because I see the community-led commitment to building it every day.
I’m writing off the back of Extreme Heat Awareness Day 2026, a day dedicated to a national conversation about the health impacts of heat. To mark the occasion, Sweltering Cities and its supporting partners, including Doctors for the Environment and Sydney Alliance, hosted a community event in Parramatta Town Hall. People from across the city, but mostly from the West. came together to talk all things heat.
We heard from Tongan-Australian author and Sweatshop editor Winnie Dunn, who reflected on her experiences growing up in Mount Druitt and spoke about how literature can be mobilised in the pursuit of a more just society. Afterwards, a beautiful Fijian choir had the whole Town Hall clapping. Bringing together authors, creatives, doctors, andcommunity advocates, alongside AFL players who spoke about the risks of training and playing in increasingly hot conditions, made the case for action undeniable — and something that we all have a stake in.
One of my favourite parts of the event was a quiz created by our volunteers Chantelle Cortez Magalang and Angelique Cherian, both Western Sydney locals who see the impacts of heat in their families and daily lives. They developed CliMates, a set of cute, friendly character designs representing four pillars of heat resilience. These illustrations helped guide and navigate conversations about the types of solutions needed to cool down our city.
The ideas exchanged at the event were practical and creative. Some of the suggestions included updated construction codes for new, climate-adaptable housing, stronger workplace protections for outdoor workers and delivery riders, and more equitable tree canopy targets. They were also immediately relevant to people living in hot homes, suburbs, and workplaces.
The CliMAtes remind me that Western Sydney is already mobilising for cooler, safer homes and neighbourhoods. People are recognising the structural drivers of heat and pushing for change, and are doing it in ways that are creative, collaborative, and grounded in community. What begins as stories of heat felt individually –– like a student sweltering in her classroom during Black Summer –– is being transformed into communities organising for change. Together, heat is being reframed as a question of justice — one that demands answers to who gets to stay cool.
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Sanaa Shah (she/her) is a Western Sydney-based community advocate and climate justice campaigner with Sweltering Cities. Living on Dharug Country, her work blends community organising, research, and policy advocacy to build heat-resilient streets, homes, and public spaces. Leading grassroots campaigns across Western Sydney, from improving bus stops to opposing local AI data centres, she is driven to ensure urban planning and climate solutions are directly shaped by community needs for an equitable future.