Swamp coolers are everywhere in Tucson. Cheap to run, great in dry heat, but they fail when humidity rises and they pull unfiltered air inside. We mapped where they are for the first time. Scroll down to explore.
Click any block group. A card will appear below showing how that neighborhood compares to the city average.
The dark mark on each bar is the city average. Click different neighborhoods to compare.
Pick any two variables. Each dot is a neighborhood. Hover for details.
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We split all block groups into four groups based on their evaporative cooler prevalence (Q1 = lowest, Q4 = highest).
| Variable | Q1 (lowest) | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 (highest) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median income ($) | 77663.95 ± 2556.43 | 81195.12 ± 2883.78 | 56456.61 ± 1963.96 | 46912.53 ± 1203.81 |
| Minority (%) | 0.35 ± 0.02 | 0.38 ± 0.01 | 0.45 ± 0.01 | 0.65 ± 0.02 |
| Median year built | 1996.97 ± 0.93 | 1990.13 ± 1.24 | 1969.67 ± 1.36 | 1967.74 ± 1.05 |
| Renter (%) | 0.32 ± 0.02 | 0.24 ± 0.01 | 0.31 ± 0.01 | 0.28 ± 0.01 |
| Single-family (%) | 0.89 ± 0.02 | 0.9 ± 0.01 | 0.84 ± 0.02 | 0.87 ± 0.02 |
Q4 neighborhoods (highest evaporative cooler prevalence) have substantially lower incomes and higher minority than Q1.
Racially restrictive covenants barred non-white families from buying homes in certain Tucson neighborhoods. They were outlawed decades ago, but their legacy persists in the built environment.
Neighborhoods inside historically covenanted areas have 9x higher odds of high evaporative cooler prevalence (p = 3.92e-11). Average prevalence inside: 37.2%. Outside: 21.1%.
This is the first household-level spatial dataset of evaporative cooler adoption in a US city. What you see here are block group summaries, not individual household data. Part of a series of studies on cooling equity, heat vulnerability, and climate adaptation in Tucson.