[Urban Heat Islands and the Collapse of Cities]
Cities generate their own heat.This is the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect.
Blanketed in concrete, asphalt, and glass, cities absorb sunlight but fail to release the heat.
Even at night, the warmth lingers, keeping urban temperatures 5–7°C higher than surrounding areas.
When a heatwave strikes, the city becomes a vast frying pan.
In its 2022 report, UN-Habitat warned that "by 2050, more than 60% of the world's major cities will see parts of their territory become uninhabitable due to the heat island effect."
Urban infrastructure—subways, tunnels, highways—will suffer structural damage from the heat.
Researchers warn that by the 2030s, enclosed spaces such as subway tunnels in megacities like Seoul, Tokyo, and New York could face interior temperatures exceeding 40°C during extreme summer heatwaves.
Overloaded power grids and failing cooling systems may trigger more frequent transit disruptions.
Circuit failures halted trains, and public transport paralysis became routine.
It wasn't only transport that failed. Heat-induced blackouts, inadequate cooling, emergency response breakdowns—even urban evacuation systems collapsed.
"The city destroys itself."
This isn't a massive explosion or a catastrophic earthquake.It's destruction that comes slowly, but with certainty, as the years pass.
[Disasters on the Road: Localized Torrential Rain and the Collapse of Transport Infrastructure]
Cities can no longer handle rain.This is the reality of Localized Torrential Rain.
Such storms dump extreme rainfall over a very limited area—typically 10–20 km across—at rates of over 100 mm per hour.
They arrive without warning and can paralyze a city in minutes.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported in 2020 that"by 2050, the frequency of nocturnal heavy rains in East Asian cities will increase up to 2.3 times compared to the present."
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) also warned:
"Seventy percent of cities will face at least three localized flooding events annually."
The greatest vulnerability lies in infrastructure.Most Korean urban drainage systems are designed to standards set in the early 2000s.
If rainfall exceeds 100 mm in an hour, roads flood.Potholes appear, underpasses collapse, vehicles become trapped in tunnels, subway stations are submerged, bridges close.
Since 2025, Seoul and the greater metropolitan area have seen a sharp rise in cases where "the city's functions come to a halt" after heavy rain.
The damage is not merely physical:
Public transport cancellations → rush-hour paralysis
Electric bus flooding → electrocution risks and service shutdowns
Autonomous transport network failures → multi-vehicle accidents
Road closures → logistics and delivery delays → urban economic slowdown
Smart circuit grid failures → total breakdown of energy transition systems
Heavy rain is no longer "just a rainy day."
It has become an algorithm for disaster—one that targets the weak points of urban systems with precision.
Some claim that "by 2050, fully digitalized infrastructure will make cities stronger."
In truth, the more complex the system, the easier it is for failures to cascade.
Rain is only the beginning.
"Cities are no longer vulnerable only to natural disasters.They are beginning to collapse structurally at the intersection of climate and technology."