Heat and Observed Economic Activity in the Rich Urban Tropics

We use space- and time-resolved mobility data to assess how heat impacts Singapore, a rich city state and arguably a harbinger of what is to come in the urbanising tropics. Singapore’s offices, factories, malls, buses and trains are widely air conditioned, its public schools less so. We document increased attendance and commuting to workplaces, malls and the more air-conditioned schools on hotter relative to cooler days, particularly by low-income residents with limited use of adaptive technologies at home. Investment by rich cities may attenuate heat’s pervasive negative consequences on productive outcomes, yet this may worsen the climate emergency in the long run.