Shifting Elemental Bodies in the City: Towards Thermal and Daylight Justice

Ramakrishnan, Kavita and Laing Ebbensgaard, Casper (2026) Shifting Elemental Bodies in the City: Towards Thermal and Daylight Justice. Urban Studies. ISSN 0042-0980

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Abstract

While thermal comfort and daylight exposure are subjective and context-specific, and in some cases even counterpoised, we show how individual and communal efforts to reduce exposure (in the case of heat) or increase exposure (in the case of sunlight) centers the elemental as a point of struggle for just urban living and citizenship. The two examples of Delhi and London that we present demonstrate how heat and daylight are encountered in the face of changing climate realities and top-down planning and housing development. With a focus on the asymmetrical vulnerabilities of exposure within thermal and luminous milieu, we contribute to calls for urban justice amidst rapidly changing and unstable climatic futures that demand pressing attention to urban social stratification and livability.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © Urban Studies Journal Limited 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	daylight,heat,housing,informality,planning,policy,social justice,environmental science (miscellaneous),urban studies,sdg 11 - sustainable cities and communities ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2301
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development) Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Science, Society and Sustainability Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	16 Jun 2026 08:58
Last Modified:	31 Jul 2026 14:00
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103404
DOI:	10.1177/00420980261453290

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