What does the city sound like in extreme heat? Water misters spray onto patios and sidewalk restaurants. Cars and trains continue to fill and pervade the streets. People walk to work where they spend their days in air-conditioned buildings, and others labor beneath makeshift canopies and under the cover of hard hats. These are but a few aspects of the urban ambiance of a desert city. This project was built up from recordings made over the course of the 100 days of over 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures in the summer of 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. With each passing year, new record temperatures are recorded in the city. But what of the sounds? Already walking every few days in the city as part of a research project to understand the urban atmosphere under these conditions, I began making field recordings to further combine with my ethnographic writing and photographs. The result is a composite, and indeed, another kind of “image” of the city. This soundwalk accompanies “Issue One: Devices” of my research-based zine project, co-authored with human geographer Anne-Lise Boyer, entitled Heat Diary: Visualizing the City in Extreme Heat.
Heat Walk
CC-BY-NC: Brian F. O'Neill
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Credits
Brian F. O'Neill
Colleague Annelise Boyer (https://www.anneliseboyer.com) contributed writing to the non-aural aspect of the project