October 2025 newsletter

Dear All,

Welcome to our second Melting Metropolis monthly newsletter. It’s been another busy month on the project. 

Firstly, I’d like to welcome Anna Bocking-Welch to the team as a new Co-Investigator. Anna replaces Laura Balderstone, who has recently left academia (we wish Laura all the best with her new ventures). Anna has expertise in modern British history and will be co-leading on our Policy engagement alongside Jon Winder.  

New York

Last week was an extremely packed one for our NYC team members, Kara Schlichting and Danny Cumming, who took part in multiple events across Climate Week NYC. We’ll be looking back at the week on Instagram, so please follow us there to find out more.

You can check out an interview with Danny and Kara on the Gotham Center for New York History blog, and see Danny’s spotlight on the NYC Climate Exchange Instagram page.

We also have a new NYC policy webpage on our website, where we’ve collected key policies and legislation on urban heat in the city.

Anna Ravenscroft, our Community Engagement Lead, was also in New York for Climate Week and to meet our NYC Storytellers and partners. You can read all about her trip on our blog.

Paris

On this side of the Atlantic, historian Chloé Duteil and artist Elly Bazigos spent a few days in a sunny Paris to do live sketches and gather reference material for the graphic novel they are producing. This was also an opportunity to visit the city through the lens of human-heat relationships in the past and the present — from Wallace fountains dispensing free drinking water since the 1870s, through to the urban forest of the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) opened this year.

There are also lots of exciting developments for us in London, which we hope to be able to share very soon.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this,

Chris