America's hottest city is nearly unlivable in summer. Can cooling technologies save it?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. I lived in Tucson from 1962 to 1968 where I went to high school,

then in Phoenix from 1983 to 1987 early in my marriage. When I was in Phoenix, I never met anyone whose time in Arizona predated mine. Everyone was a newcomer. They all felt that so long as they didn't have to scrape snow off their cars in winter, everything was perfect. Okay, I know from experience how little fun it is to scrape that snow, but it is not the only thing that contributes to quality of life.

When we lived in Phoenix, and I had a young child, people would tell me they'd moved there to be outside all year. My husband and I concluded that the outdoor life style might possibly have consisted of drinking margaritas around the pool, but very few people in our apartment complex were ever at the pool, so I'm not even sure about that. In January and February, when the temperatures midday were in the 70s, perfect going outside weather, I'd take my son to the nearby park. All but one time I was the ONLY mother with her child at the park. It was disturbing.

My husband once said that to dress for the heat in Phoenix, you had to wear an air-conditioned car.

Heck, in Minneapolis, where we lived right before moving to Phoenix, we'd see more people outside jogging when it was below zero than we ever did in Phoenix in genuinely mild weather. In Minneapolis, the temperature had to get to -20 or lower for people to start staying inside.