The spiking heat dissipates in leafy central neighborhoods, said professor Austin Troy, chairman of CU Denver’s department of urban and regional planning. Hardest hit are the mostly paved downtown areas, RiNo and newly overhauled areas along the concrete I-25 and I-70 corridors, Troy said. Trees can help ease the heat. But Denver lags in trees and shrubs, with a 9.6-percent cover in 2009, compared, for example, with a 53-percent cover in Atlanta, a 2012 urban forestry study found.

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