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Short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to understand in which ways heat is taken (or not) into account when it comes to develop the institutional work done by public officials in a municipal administration such as the Council of Madrid.

Long abstract:

During the spring and summer months, heat is ubiquitous in Madrid; it spreads everywhere, and affects every aspect of everyday life. However, when it comes to being affected by it within bureaucratic work, heat seems to be taken for granted. As soon as public officials reach their desks, heat is not over the table. Still, heat is clearly considered a public issue, and the way of tackling it seems also “clear”: more greenery, more trees, more NBS, more shades, less asphalt, and so on. Yet the engagement with and implementation of such measures are far from ordinary institutional work.

The aim of this paper is to understand in which ways heat is taken (or not) into account when it comes to develop the institutional work done by public officials in a municipal administration such as the Council of Madrid. Based on fieldwork developed around a course for public officials called “Climatic Action in Public Places”, the paper investigates the gap between the creative, imaginative and innovative ideas developed by public officials in the course (where they are proposed speculative exercises around climatic solutions for the city) and their reluctance to incorporate such thinking processes in their own ordinary work.

The hypothesis presented here is that multiple epistemologies of heat emerge in different institutional contexts and situations, and public officials problematise and operationalise them accordingly. Hence, the questions are what those different epistemologies of heat are and how they are articulated between imagination, everyday life and everyday work.