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Good practice Imported

San Salvador Heat-Island Living Lab — IDB 'Cities for All' Co-Creation Pilot

El Salvador · San Salvador · See the El Salvador profile · See the San Salvador profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 76% 57/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

San Salvador's metropolitan planning office (OPAMSS) won an IDB Cities Lab challenge and, with two universities and City Adapt, piloted low-cost green-infrastructure modules against urban heat islands over a 6-8 month co-design phase.

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
COAMSS/OPAMSS Innovation Unit (San Salvador Metropolitan Planning Office)
Period
2022-2023
Keywords
urban living lab, climate adaptation, green infrastructure, heat-island mitigation, nature-based solutions

Context

San Salvador's metropolitan area (covered by COAMSS/OPAMSS) faces growing urban heat-island exposure driven by sparse vegetation and heat-retaining building materials, with the poorest residents most affected.

Objectives

The Inter-American Development Bank's "Cities for All" Cities Lab challenge selected a joint proposal from COAMSS/OPAMSS's Innovation Unit, the University of El Salvador, Don Bosco University and the NGO City Adapt to test low-cost green-infrastructure responses to heat-island exposure.

Activities

With IDB technical assistance, the partners ran a roughly six-to-eight-month co-design and experimentation process, deploying low-cost vertical and horizontal green-infrastructure modules at selected sites to observe their effect on heat exposure, air quality and stormwater retention.

Results

Public materials document the co-creation process and the module deployment itself, but as of the latest reporting no large-sample, quantified before/after heat-reduction results have been published, and the initiative remains at pilot scale.

Conclusions

The pilot demonstrates a replicable, multi-stakeholder living-lab methodology for heat-island mitigation, but city-wide scale-up beyond the initial experimentation sites has not been confirmed.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
COAMSS/OPAMSS Innovation Unit staff, University of El Salvador and Don Bosco University researchers, City Adapt technical advisors, IDB Cities Lab technical-assistance team

Conditions for success

  • Access to IDB Cities Lab technical assistance and challenge support
  • Existing multi-university and NGO co-design partnerships
  • Availability of selected sites for module deployment

Common failure modes

  • Technical assistance and experimentation funding are tied to a fixed 6-8 month window, with continuation beyond the pilot unclear
  • No large-sample quantified evidence yet exists to justify city-wide investment

Where it fits

Governance type
metropolitan planning office (COAMSS/OPAMSS) leading a university/NGO co-design partnership
Scale
site-level pilot
Income level
lower-middle-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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