Here’s how a CT city is using public art to stay cool and fight climate change

NEW HAVEN – A flower, a red sun with eco-friendly transportation and a color gradient might not appear to be connected at first glance, but the special reflective paint used to create all three murals illustrates a growing trend to use art to cool cities, including New Haven. 

The basketball court at Kimberly Field was recently revamped into a new cooling mural where the vibrant flower joins cooling murals on the Manufacturing and Technical Community Hub on Mill Street and at the Goffe Street Armory.

“It’s both cooling those surfaces with a special type of paint as well as being able to convey climate messaging using art,” said Colleen Murphy-Dunning, executive director of the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability.

Murphy-Dunning said all three murals started with Karen Seto, a professor of geography and urbanization science at the Hixon Center, and Kymberly Pinder, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art, who were concerned about higher temperatures in certain New Haven neighborhoods.

She said Seto and Pinder saw “an opportunity to use public art to visualize climate change and the urban heat island effect” by painting cooling murals in those neighborhoods.

Heat islands refer to urbanized areas that experience higher temperatures than isolated areas, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency website. Structures, such as buildings and roads, typically absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more often than natural landscapes, and urban areas “where these structures are highly concentrated and greenery is limited become ‘islands’ of higher temperatures,” the website states.

Murphy-Dunning said the Hixon Center’s primary strategy for combating urban heat is planting trees to encourage canopy cover and improve shading. The cooling murals are “just a new strategy we’re adding.”

Ian French, the Hixon Center’s communications director, said they haven’t yet heard of other Connecticut communities painting cooling murals, but the approach “is gaining traction” in the U.S.

“The largest implementation we are aware of took place in Los Angeles where cool pavement coatings and murals were applied to approximately 10 square blocks,” French said. “The findings show that cool murals can reduce surface temperatures on average by 10 degrees Fahrenheit on sunny days and lower surrounding air temperatures by as much as 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit during extreme heat.”

Murphy-Dunning said New Haven’s first climate-themed cooling mural was painted in 2023 on the side of the MATCH Hub building at 20 Mill St. MATCH received a $100,000 grant in March 2023 from the city’s Career Pathways Initiative for the mural, which was designed and painted by the Yale School of Art.

The second cooling mural was created in 2024 in collaboration with local artist Michael DeAngelo, the Yale School of Art, Yale School of the Environment, the city of New Haven and community stakeholders. It was painted on a 250-foot wall on the side of the Goffe Street Armory, according to the Hixon Center.

French said the latest cooling mural at Kimberly Field was the result of a year-long collaboration between the Hixon Center, the city’s Urban Resources Initiative, Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy, Yale School of Art and New Haven Parks Department.

“We were fortunate to receive partial funding through New Haven’s Art, Culture and Tourism Department’s Neighborhood Cultural Vitality grant program,” he said. “The Parks Department also played a critical role through ongoing park improvements, including the resurfacing of the basketball court last fall.”

Leading the project was Haejin Park, a New Haven resident and a 2025 graduate of the Yale School of Art.

Park, 33, said she saw the city’s other cooling murals before responding to the open call for the cooling mural project at Kimberly Field.

“I heard that, through the Yale School of Environment, that the neighborhood has the least amount of trees and it gets the most heat in the neighborhood, and I was interested in the change the art could bring not just in the aesthetics but the impact in the science,” she said.

Park said she also visited the basketball court before it was resurfaced last fall and noticed it “wasn’t in great condition” and “definitely needed a repair.”

Along with collaborating with students, scientists and environmentalists, Park, who works mainly in watercolors, said this project marked her first mural and public art project. 

Starting last June, Park met with the rising ninth graders at BRADA to brainstorm the design. 

At their first meeting, she said she handed out blank paper for them to visualize their world impacted by climate change and what their neighborhood would look like “if they started making good choices to help the planet.” She said they discussed different design ideas and chose a color palette for the basketball court at their second meeting in October before she presented the top three ideas for students to vote on at their last meeting in April.

The mural came to life on the Kimberly Field basketball court over seven days, starting May 28, Park said. In that time, French said Park engaged more than 30 community volunteers to help her paint along with four classrooms of BRADA students.

Park admitted it took some time to figure out the best way to work with the reflective paint and the project’s scale.

“It was like a pancake type of paint, which I’m not really used to at all,” she said, “but I think for the first day we tried different methods. We tried brushes, we tried squeegees, we tried rollers, and as the days went by, we unlocked a method together. The way we mixed colors, the way we mixed paint mattered. With the help of volunteers, we were able to unlock the effect I wanted to achieve.”

She said students even cheered for her as she painted.

“It was encouraging,” Park said with a laugh. “There were community members who came to play basketball while I was painting, and they loved the design … I think what makes me the most happy is that this court is going to be used as a basketball court. It’s something that is functional and beautiful and I hope the students and neighborhood, whoever wants to use the basketball court, enjoys the basketball court and enjoys that it’s so cool.”

The finished mural was unveiled to the community on June 10, French said. 

“Public art is a gift to any community,” Pinder said. “Great to see a Yale alum staying here and engaging Betsy Ross students to create another cool mural in New Haven. Big thanks to URI and the City of New Haven for repaving the basketball court and amplifying planetary solutions throughout our neighborhoods.”

Murphy-Dunning said the Hixon Center is looking at more locations with higher temperatures or “surfaces that would lend themselves to a mural.” She said they are also working on fundraising to install new murals in the city within the next few years.

“We feel like it’s proven successful and we want to continue to scale that work to other places,” she said.