Heat, Housing, and Informality in Coastal Cities: Climate Stress and Adaptive Urban Networks

Abstract

Short Heat has become a defining condition of everyday urban life in many coastal cities, where rising temperatures interact with humidity, dense construction, and uneven service access. In low-income and informal settlements, these pressures are intensified by precarious housing, limited cooling options, and fragile infrastructures that convert climate stress into patterned social harm. This article examines how housing conditions, infrastructural inequality, and adaptive networks shape thermal vulnerability in coastal urban life. The article adopts a qualitative and theory-driven approach informed by urban climate vulnerability research, informality studies, and a social reproduction perspective. It draws on comparative scholarship, policy discussions, and documented urban experiences related to coastal heat, insecure housing, informal settlement conditions, and neighborhood adaptation. Analytical attention is directed to three interconnected dimensions: infrastructural mediation, spatial sorting, and relational coping. A mechanism-based synthesis is used to clarify how climate stress is translated into unequal domestic, health, and livelihood burdens across urban settings. Housing precarity and unreliable services emerge as central pathways through which heat becomes a socially distributed form of inequality, while adaptive networks provide support under conditions of structural constraint. Climate adaptation in coastal cities therefore cannot be understood only as a technical challenge, because it is inseparable from housing insecurity, urban informality, and the unequal labor of social reproduction. The article contributes to the field by offering a sociological framework that links thermal inequality to housing, infrastructure, and informal adaptive networks in coastal urban environments.