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Paper short abstract

Public schools in hot contexts are in the forefront of urban climate municipal action, and heat is an actor that plays a significant role in its development. Building from the case of a renovation of a public school, this paper explores the multiple roles of heat and its political implications.

Paper long abstract

Schools are increasingly becoming contested heated spaces in hotter countries. Due to the raise of temperatures, many facilities that where initially designed to not to be in service during the summer season, now fail to be comfortable places, for not only summers are hot anymore. In Spain, public schools are the only public buildings that do not have air-conditioning by default, and schoolyards are usually no more than a concrete slab to play football; namely, uncomfortable places. However, developing climate action in municipal bureaucratic contexts is a complex endeavour.

How is heat problematised and operationalised in public climate action? What kinds of heat are prioritised and how does bureaucracy understand comfort? To answer these questions, the paper explores the case of a renovation of a nursery school in Madrid from within building on ethnographic fieldwork developed while working as a public architect for the municipality. The paper is divided into two chapters where multiple “municipal heats” are discussed: first, the failed process of renovating the interior of the building, in particular, the air-conditioning system of the school; then, the eventually realised refurbishing project of the schoolyard. In both chapters, different “comfortable” bureaucratic responses are given by actors - i.e. public officials, external contractors, managers, and users - to “solve” the problems, yet problems are multiple, and sometimes contradictory. In concluding, the paper reflects on the political capacities of “municipal heat” as a multiple complex bureaucratic object.