Keywords: Satellite analysis, urban morphology, census data, spatial statistics, microclimate simulation

The 2025 Lancet Countdown reports that heat-related mortality has risen by 23% since the 1990s and that heat exposure led to 640 billion potential labour hours lost in 2024. This paper examines how extreme heat compounds existing social inequalities in Mexico City and develops an operational pathway for delivering cooling where it yields the greatest social benefit.

We integrate a decade of summer satellite observations with block-level census indicators to estimate daytime air temperature across the entire city. Results indicate systematic exposure disparities: older adults, disabled residents and households without a car are disproportionately located in hotter blocks, commonly experiencing daytime conditions around 2 to 3 °C above the citywide mean.

By combining street-network configuration (Space Syntax) with built-form descriptors (Space Matrix), we show that high-exposure areas also contain highly connected, heavily traversed corridors — identifying priority corridors where interventions are likely to protect the most exposed groups.