The U.S. is in a “heatshed moment,” says Ladd Keith, director of the University of Arizona’s Heat Resilience Institute: “a critical turning point in which heat must be rapidly addressed to protect health and livelihoods worldwide,” he wrote in a Journal of Urban Affairs commentary in April. “Our cities were built for a climate that no longer exists,” Keith said in a recent interview with Smart Cities Dive. “Cities aren’t ready for the heat we're experiencing this year, and they won't be ready for the heat that we experience in a decade from now. We really need to move more quickly to retrofit our cities and adapt them for the climate that we will be experiencing in the future and that we're already experiencing right now.” Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. SMART CITIES DIVE: You’ve said extreme heat is an invisible issue. Are city officials starting to understand its importance? LADD KEITH: 100%. I've been working on extreme heat for over 15 years, and it wasn't until 2021 or so, with the Pacific Northwest heatwave in America, that cities started taking it seriously. Why does heat get less policy attention than floods, hurricanes and wildfires? Those other hazards do harm to human life — obviously quite a lot — but they also harm property. In the United States, we care a lot about property and infrastructure. We have insurance; we have lots of money tied up in those things. And unfortunately, it seems, based on the money that we spend, that we care a little bit less about human life and quality of life and health. Are cities making meaningful progress on heat resilience? If you looked at the United States 10 years ago, most governments didn't recognize heat as something they even