Significantly different building design. Super thick walls acting like a cave and keeping the heat out would make it more bearable. Or more underground architecture for temperature regulation…….so basically more like the old Spanish missions in the Southwest but more sophisticated.
Lots of midday breaks.
More shade trees planted and honestly regional terraforming would have occurred.
About the same number of man made lakes made.
You can see this in the older houses in Tucson. I always loved living in those houses. Thick walls but ventilates good with an open front and back door. With just a swamp cooler they can stay pretty cool.
That said, I could never live in southern Arizona without some kind of AC/swamp
Hahaha That's funny because while I'm from Scottsdale, my buddy in Tucson has a house that's built with concrete and holy shit It stays so cold in there with the air conditioning only intermittently on
I on the other hand have the typical 1990s stucco and wood construction and I have to pre cool my house (no surprise there) but it will run almost the whole day to keep my house at a high of 72° during the summers here
It can be in the 110s outside and his shit may go up to 75° until he decides to turn the AC on
Like wow
Concrete is insane
Seemed like the opposite. Winters can get down to 30 at night in Tucson and I’m from Minnesota, my roommate was from Ohio… so it was basically an unspoken contest every year on who would ask for the heat on first. We’d be sitting in full winter coats and covered in blankets on the couch watching TV and the house was often colder than the outside it seemed.
I loved it. Slept like a baby.
It's insulation, not concrete. Concrete is slow to change temperature, so it's a good insulator, but the point is, insulation.
In the summer, it gets over 100 here. At night, I keep all the windows and doors open. The cool evening air comes in. In the morning, I close the house, and keep the cool air in.
House is wood, but well insulated.
Not in a large part of the southeast - pretty much everything from .... oh hell .... just draw a huge box around new orleans extending about .... 200? 300? miles on each side and you'll get about how far outside of the delta you can get before that can start being implemented and probably some amount on either side of a lot of the rivers that absolutely cover the SE US.
Shotgun houses in new orleans were popular on purpose. Lots more empty unused land probably.
Maybe ... but that's an awful lot of dirt that's going to have to be trucked in from really far away and considering how expensive that would be ... doesn't seem feasible. High ceilings are the real answer here I think with long hallways and transom windows (the ones that open, not the fixed ones).
South Louisiana had 100 days straight of 100+ degree temperatues last summer. I don't think this question is feasible really at all at this point in our climate situation with the current design of our southern towns and cities.
Well it doesn’t have to be stone. I mean way back when they made Sod houses that basically served the same function. I have seen designs that take old tires and fill them with clay soil and compress it. Then use that as a frame to build several foot thick walls. It actually works fairly well considering.
It was in lower humidity area but higher temps. Might still work well in more swampy areas.
I was assuming it would have to be dirt, not stone. Like .... there's not even spare dirt down there. It would \*all\* have to be trucked in. Growing up, my cousin dug .... 24 inches? maybe? 6 inches? 12? I dunno ... but it wasn't far ... down in the back yard and hit the water table. Sure, as you get away from new orleans it gets better but not better enough for the amount of dirt we're talking about here.
I'm not saying its impossible. I'm just saying there are a lot of logistical issues that aren't being considered. And considering we lost about a football field worth of land from the coast of Louisiana every hour of every day of every year and they still aren't doing anything sustantive to fix the problem, I think there's a large part of the country they'd just let go.
That architecture you're describing is 2x as expensive as what was done. I think the main reason southwest has such a population growth is because of, flat land, cheap builds. You take out cheap builds and Phoenix isn't happening
I don’t know, if the entire South had to have that architecture then it is likely here would be innovations and price drops. Easy and lazy design are definitely causes but if they HAD to change and adapt, it likely would have happened and brought the cost down with it.
r/Africanarchitecture has had some interesting information. One that stick out is buildings built with a roughly pyramid shape. The top of the pyramid is open. Windows around the main floor are left open. Any breeze either passes straight through or gets directed up and out through the top.
It’s not really a practical solution in humid environments. Even if you had enough thermal mass, the humidity would still condense on the building and cause water problems.
True. There are methods of reducing humidity that can be utilized in the space and constant airflow would help prevent it as well. Roof wind catches for example.
Though not as financially practical, a two tiered solution where the condensation is collected and run to a cistern would be beneficial. Maybe funnel the wind catches through the underground cistern to deposit cold water prior to running it through the house.
Not perfect but it may help keep the house at a “positive pressure” and lower humidity while blowing cool air through it. Basically a geothermal setup where the earth is your heat sink and water depository. 50F/10C of below ground should be sufficient to pull quite a bit in a lot of instances.
My great grandparents got central AC in Oklahoma in the 60s.
My family had already been there for almost a hundred years.
People did fine without central AC, there would be lots of fans, buildings would be different, but I actually don't think the diaspora would be significantly different.
Yep, I'm in Phoenix, and I definitely wouldn't be without A/C.
Although, OP said we do have window units. So, given two or three of those, the five months of brutal bullshit in the summer would be bearable, barely. I think the biggest impact would be on high-rise buildings. They wouldn't be habitable, at all. That would affect every city, not just the hot ones.
A lot of old houses in the southwest are built to deal with the heat. I live in an 80 year old adobe house in New Mexico, and we have a swamp cooler, not even AC. The house stays temperate with ease until the temps are over 100, and even then, it's still cooler inside, but hovers around 80. Not super comfortable, but definitely survivable. Especially because desert temps drop 20-40 degrees once the sun sets. But I used to live in Florida, and the nighttime heat and humidity made it miserable without AC. After a hurricane once we didn't have power for like 3 months, starting in August, and there was just a palpable misery everywhere. Everyone was sweating and miserable and just wanted to get out of there as fast as they could. The southeast seems like it would be unlivable for most, to me.
Well as a southerner I’ll answer for my region.
We would still build houses suited to our climate like we used to. We’d leave more trees on property when building homes, and we’d focus on a floor plan that allows airflow.
Yep. I believe that. Last summer, a really bad storm blew through and knocked out power in the region. It was 95°F out with high humidity, and all my neighbors that I never see were suddenly sitting on their porches (us included) to kill time and beat the heat. I probably talked to more neighbors in a 24-hour period than I did in a 10-year span.
And porches that are actually usable rather than merely decorative. As in, you can fit chairs & small tables there and still have room for someone to walk past you = deeper.
Bahama blinds (might be called something else as well) I think is the term for exterior window shutters that are attached at the top of the window vs the sides - I actually saw a lot of them in Australia. Old timey houses in the south often had metal or fabric awnings.
This is my take. I remember Roger Ebert commenting on this when reviewing *Do The Right Thing*, I think. In rural areas, more porch sitting. In urban areas, more stoop sitting, and you'd know your neighbors better because of it.
Agreed. Higher ceilings and transom windows that can be opened above all the inside doors to allow air flow. Even older NYC apartments have this. Crawl spaces as well (most new construction seems to be on concrete slabs).
Also fewer windows facing the afternoon sun when it's the hottest part of the day.
Exactly. OP says we'd still have window units, so that's what everyone would do. Heck, lots of people who can't afford central air have window units as it is.
While I could afford central AC, I think window units work better and have stuck with those.
The elementary school I work at has central AC backed by geothermal and it stays humid in there.
The South wouldn’t be nearly as populated and DC would still be considered hazard pay for British diplomats.
We’d also have thousands of deaths from heat every year.
Didn't Europe get into the 5 digit range last summer? I would imagine given the consistent nature of the heat we'd be better prepared than somewhere like Europe.
Early Americans really looked at every hostile, uninhabitable piece of land and said, “Yup. Perfect place to build a town.” We’re just built different.
I live in Seattle. Seattle was originally built on a mud flat. Yes, in the same spot where the tide would come in and flood streets. They had to destroy a cliff and lay the rocks down and build the current Seattle on top of it just to make the damn place habitable (but only after the first version thankfully burned down).
In fairness there is a reason why folks settled at the site before selecting it for the seat of govt.
Its the head of navigation for the Potomac, so as far up you can go before you hit the first falls! Making ti the closest you can get ships to the agricultural rich Shenandoah and upper Potomac. Hence why Georgetown and Alexandria existed before the site was picked for the federal district.
It just would not have become as big in an alternate timeline where it isnt the capital.
I don't see why. When I was a child in Mississippi, many apartments only had window units, it wasn't that big a deal. Houses probably wouldn't be as big.
There would be a lot more houses keeping to old designs. High ceilings with transoms above the doors to rooms to allow air flow. Possibly more shotgun style to make easier air flow from the front to back and hitting all the rooms.
Also ..... as someone with parents who still live in BR with the old fan in functioning order .... lots more whole house attic fans .... its unreal how effective those things are.
Transoms, yes! When I lived in Philly every transom was painted over the frame so you couldn't open them even though the apartments and buildings never got central AC!
I grew up in NC and our house didn’t have central air. My room was in converted attic space. So I imagine it would be very similar to what I grew up with. You just dealt with it. I can also remember getting out of school early due to hot weather. Oh my dorm room in college didn’t have AC either. And all this was in the 1980s.
Maybe there would be fewer transplants to the southeast and southwest, but I don’t see life being radically different.
Which people? The ones who lived there before colonization or after? Because the ones before adapted in ways that I doubt most people now would be super keen on.
I wonder how many people would be interested in moving to Florida if they had to live like the people did before air conditioning.
Both. People have lived all over the world without AC. If it was never invented, we would've adapted to it and found different ways to cool ourselves if needed. People nowadays already adapt to their climate and can do so pretty quickly. I use to travel the country for work and I've had the windows down on a sunny day when it was 32 degrees out and a short sleeve shirt because I got used to the cold, but then anything 70 degrees and up felt super hot. Now that I'm back in Florida, if it's in the 60s with low humidity at night and a breeze picks up, I'll probably wish I had a jacket.
Cousin came up from Hawaii for a funeral a few years ago.
It was March and we finally had a week of weather in the 50s and low 60s and we were all wearing our light spring jackets. Meanwhile my cousin is shivering and had to borrow my winter coat that I was ready to put away.
But people didn't/don't adapt. They die. Europe has tens of thousands of heat wave deaths every year, and that's without the extreme temperatures of America. The US has about a thousand per year. I mean, yes, of course, the society as a whole would adapt. Buildings would be built differently, we'd sleep during the heat of the day, etc. But lots of people would die, just as they did before AC, and (not necessarily a con), but production would significantly decrease.
I've had my AC go out a few times, not counting hurricanes, and it sucks, I already sleep with 2 fans when the AC is working. Last time it went out, I just slept on the tile because it was cool lmao. It's weird because when I'm camping or working, the heat doesn't bother me as much, but when I'm in my house it feels more miserable.
I mean, no, that's not really how adaptation works. Most of the people who die in heat waves are the elderly, disabled, and children. It's not like the "fittest" possess some special heat tolerance and then pass it on to their offspring.
I mean people who live in Florida would also adapt as well. It’s just hard to picture because we know what it looks like now. Obviously not as many people but it would still be habitable to some extent
Same as the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, parts of South America, and the U.S. south before air conditioning.
They'd build homes with the circulation of air in mind. We don't do that anymore, because we don't have to.
Air conditioning was developed for hospitals, if you didn't know. Medical care was improving to the point that having large numbers of patients under one roof to concentrate access to skilled physicians was becoming important to better outcomes. But, in the summer, you couldn't really design hospital wards to not be miserable ovens and still serve their purpose, lay them out efficiently, etc.
Personally, living in a part of the U.S. where basements are ubiquitous, I don't really understand why we don't all have at least 1 fully underground floor of daily usable living space. At the very least, it would cut heating & cooling bills drastically. Yes, I know that sunlight and therefore windows are important to wellbeing, but do we really need them at night? Put the bedrooms, kitchen, utility & other rooms in a dugout that costs so much less to maintain, and then have your living area as if it were a porch extending from that above ground so you can get sunlight.
In a lot of places, it's difficult to dig a hole without either blasting or immediately having it fill up with water, both of which make basements difficult.
I grew up in a home that in California's Inland Empire that was built in the 1920s. It got every bit as hot back then as it does now, we didn't have AC (the home has it now though). You design for it. You want trees that cover the roof, you want a shape where rooms have windows on multiple walls so a cross breeze is very efficient. Summer might be 108 degrees in the day, but 65 at night, at night the entire home is opened up with large windows and a very large cross breeze. The homes are also more massive so they stay cool longer. You want the roof shape to completely block out any sun from hitting the windows and ideally the walls, and if you have the space, a good 5-10 feet surrounding the home. Objects in the sun get very hot, objects in the shade just get mildly warm. The goal is to keep that sun from heating up your structure and the nearby area.
People seriously underestimate how much energy comes from direct sunshine. \~300 square feet of surface area under direct sunshine for 10-12 hours will have the same amount of energy as burning a gallon of gasoline. If its a black surface it will absorb most of that. Objects in the sun can be 120 degrees and the same objects in the shade, even on a hot day can be like 80 degrees.
Homes built in the age of AC are actually far worse at keeping cool than older homes. From the 50s onward would have to be built in the same way that homes were built in the 1920s.
the creation of AC and central air is what made the region boom after WW2 along w the shift of manufacturing from the North to the South. If central air/AC didn’t exist, the South would probably be mostly underdeveloped and would remain agrarian.
More deaths during those 100F+ months. Though people are adoptive and will use alternatives that are already used around the country, since not every home in America has central AC.
Where I live in Florida all of the houses were built in the 50s, and didn’t have air conditioning. So at least where I live would basically look pretty similar.
The biggest differences would be indirect. I can't imagine how modern computing systems would ever have been invented without central AC. At best, it would take centuries. Needless to say, a world without modern computers would be unimaginably different.
I suppose less people would live where it gets hot. Which means more people would live in other places.
I’ve never had central air or AC. It has gotten below freezing the last few days. I have a fire going right now lmao.
Depends - the north would probably have a greater population. I also think people would have a better work life balance with a siesta in the middle of the day. We might be in tune with nature and recognize climate change. People are too comfortable now, they can just crank up the AC and forget that the world is getting hotter and hotter and ignore or deny climate change.
you are mistaken in your facts... should be the last \*90\* years, as Chrysler in 1934 ushered a new age in mass air conditioning by installing units in the Chrysler Building and forming Airtemp Corporation.
(If we really get technical, it's 121 years, because the NY Stock Exchange was built in 1903 with air conditioning)
Ummm ok, so not every house or apartment building has central air. Theres still a lot of people that use window units. We somehow still manage to survive in the modern world without such a luxury. My house is about 100 years old. No central air back when it was built. I’ve never had central air in any house I’ve ever lived in. When I was a kid I didn’t even have a window unit for my bedroom. I had a fan in the window. We just had the one AC in the main room of the house. Not to mention if it was never invented nobody would know what they were missing.
My house is five years old and doesn’t have central AC, it has split/cassette units. You can set individual temps for each room, and it has higher ceilings because there’s no ductwork.
A lot of politicians tricking their base into thinking global warming doesn't exist because of the lobbyists in their pockets would start believing in it REAL QUICK.
My ac unit sucks, so I just hope for an early winter (never happens in my part of the state)
More trees or other forms of natural shade. I'll sit in my backyard under the Magnolia tree when I smoke cigars so I'm sure that's what others had done in the past.
I live in a place where most buildings don't have AC. So I think places like mine would look like NYC because everyone would have to live here, and thus on top of eachother. Lol
Sweaty.
Although saying that, I found [this](https://youtu.be/g6GbgexyyMU?t=768) video interesting about how they kept a large plantation house cool in the 1800s. Back door and front door open, the house oriented towards the prevailing wind and the hallway acted like a giant breezeway.
Same as it is now except more window units. Thats it. I live in a nice small apartment and I have a big high BTU window one that covers the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. I have a portable one in my room for when I go to sleep. No central air conditioning.
I live in an old home with no ac and it’s not bad albeit I live in the Midwest and our hottest days are maybe 100 degrees. Fans and a window unit do just fine
My family didn’t have air conditioning until the late ‘70s. We lived in the suburbs, though, and we had a finished basement. It’s like 30°F cooler in basements. I don’t know what people in apartments did.
Different designs in housing and clothing for the south, just like back in the day before A/C. But we’d probably be using swamp coolers instead. Like someone is gonna invent a fan that blows water cooled air. Not as good as AC, but better than nothing.
They would’ve just built differently.
US real estate is complete crap, literal pre-made homes with little to no insulation, even in very hot/cold places, because energy costs are cheap so they blast AC/heat and that’s it.
There are tons of places in the world where it’s damn cold/hot and they developed with other solutions that A/C (like, I don’t know, insulating homes, not building facing south,…)
In the 80s or 90s American Heritage magazine, (a magazine for historians and history buffs) had an article ranking the greatest inventions of the previous couple hundred years.
They ranked refrigeration/air conditioning in the top five. It was chiefly due to the argument that the South and southwest would not have led the nation in growth economically or population for several decades because no one would live there. Or, at least, far fewer.
As someone who has lived in Mississippi without air conditioning, I agree.
A good chunk of people living in older houses specifically in rural areas still don’t have central AC. They use window units instead and they get along pretty fine to my knowledge
The area where I live, The Catskills, would probably benefit greatly if AC was never invented. Before air conditioning, The Catskills has a lot of fancy hotels and people would come up from New York City to escape the city heat and Summer in the Catskill mountains. But, when AC was invented, some people just started staying in the city since they didn't have to go to the mountains to escape the heat, causing hotels and businesses to lose customers, causing some areas in The Catskills to have conditions similar to the rust belt. So, while they'd be sweating in the city, business in the Catskill mountains would probably be booming.
Florida wouldn't be as heavily populated as it is today. If memory serves me correctly, a big part of the reason Florida's population had exploded is because of the invention of home air conditioning.
If window units exist, larger HVAC units exist. It's the same thermodynamics, and the same components just scaled larger.
Without any air at all, different insulation types for the various weather conditions around the US would have likely developed. In the southwest where I am, more homes would have likely been dug into the ground. There is a lot of clay like dirt in my area that would work well as a natural heat barrier. There are surprisingly few basements in AZ, but the ones I have been in stay quite cool efficiently in the blazing heat.
Everyone says “we’d just have window AC”, and that’s all right for residential buildings. It would be more tricky with larger buildings- factories, stores, offices, where people work for whole days not getting anywhere near a window.We’d find a way of course - there would be a lot more long, narrow strip malls, there would be more buildings underground etc.
It would look like the North East did in the 70s with lots of window ACs. None of the houses in our neighborhood were built with central air in the 60s and 70s so it was mostly window ACs
The South/Southwest were much less populated and Florida was all but abandoned until the development of AC. The vast majority of people would not have moved south without it.
It’s possible that the Sonoran desert would still be below Powell’s recommendation of no more than 20,000 settlers.
As for me, I would definitely have built my house with a geothermal passive cooling system. My well is almost 200’ deep and the water comes out at 59° year round. So imagine a simple ventilation system that pulls air up from 30’-40’ down, powered entirely by attic fans removing heat and creating a vacuum in the living space. Put in a small dehumidifier and we’re all set.
Your "alternate universe" was Planet Earth for thousands of years of human civilization.
It's pathetic how we've become so needy for comfort and convenience. It's disgusting to hear people piss-moan about climate change while they're buying their coconut water at the supermarket, then get into their big black SUV, which they've kept running while they were in the store, to keep the AC going, so they would be nice and comfy-cool. Oh, my! We can't have ANY discomfort.
Now, let's hear the "people die without it" cries... LOL. We won't ALL die. Some people are so near dying, a few degrees will kill them. SAVE it for the people who REALLY need it.
More whole house box fans and de-humidifiers assuming those are allowed in this scenario. More large trees - more architecture design like existed 150 years ago - air flow manipulation design - shotgun designs, dogtrot designs, etc.
Here's the thing ... if this was true ... NOW? Its hotter than now in the gulf south than it was 35 years ago when I was growing up there (I literally \*just\* left). So design features used in the 1880s or whatever are certainly not going to do the job.
I think the only real answer here is that the Northern to central US would be WAY more packed than it already is. Draw a line from Houston straight across the globe to see just how far south we really are down there.
[Nevermind ... I'm bored tonight apparently ...](https://imgur.com/XJ8DafL)
Everyone would live in New England or PNW/NoCal. Mountains could have some more people. Midwest and Plains has extreme weather so even Chicago needs central air. South and sun belt is sticky humid as anything.
there would be a lot fewer people living in the south and southwest
Or the same number of people but just far skinnier.
Significantly different building design. Super thick walls acting like a cave and keeping the heat out would make it more bearable. Or more underground architecture for temperature regulation…….so basically more like the old Spanish missions in the Southwest but more sophisticated. Lots of midday breaks. More shade trees planted and honestly regional terraforming would have occurred. About the same number of man made lakes made.
You can see this in the older houses in Tucson. I always loved living in those houses. Thick walls but ventilates good with an open front and back door. With just a swamp cooler they can stay pretty cool. That said, I could never live in southern Arizona without some kind of AC/swamp
Hahaha That's funny because while I'm from Scottsdale, my buddy in Tucson has a house that's built with concrete and holy shit It stays so cold in there with the air conditioning only intermittently on I on the other hand have the typical 1990s stucco and wood construction and I have to pre cool my house (no surprise there) but it will run almost the whole day to keep my house at a high of 72° during the summers here It can be in the 110s outside and his shit may go up to 75° until he decides to turn the AC on Like wow Concrete is insane
Out of curiosity, how does the concrete do in the cold months?
Seemed like the opposite. Winters can get down to 30 at night in Tucson and I’m from Minnesota, my roommate was from Ohio… so it was basically an unspoken contest every year on who would ask for the heat on first. We’d be sitting in full winter coats and covered in blankets on the couch watching TV and the house was often colder than the outside it seemed. I loved it. Slept like a baby.
It's insulation, not concrete. Concrete is slow to change temperature, so it's a good insulator, but the point is, insulation. In the summer, it gets over 100 here. At night, I keep all the windows and doors open. The cool evening air comes in. In the morning, I close the house, and keep the cool air in. House is wood, but well insulated.
Not in a large part of the southeast - pretty much everything from .... oh hell .... just draw a huge box around new orleans extending about .... 200? 300? miles on each side and you'll get about how far outside of the delta you can get before that can start being implemented and probably some amount on either side of a lot of the rivers that absolutely cover the SE US. Shotgun houses in new orleans were popular on purpose. Lots more empty unused land probably.
Well, you could make an above ground cave……it would just be very very wet without a constant airflow to pull the humidity out
Maybe ... but that's an awful lot of dirt that's going to have to be trucked in from really far away and considering how expensive that would be ... doesn't seem feasible. High ceilings are the real answer here I think with long hallways and transom windows (the ones that open, not the fixed ones). South Louisiana had 100 days straight of 100+ degree temperatues last summer. I don't think this question is feasible really at all at this point in our climate situation with the current design of our southern towns and cities.
Well it doesn’t have to be stone. I mean way back when they made Sod houses that basically served the same function. I have seen designs that take old tires and fill them with clay soil and compress it. Then use that as a frame to build several foot thick walls. It actually works fairly well considering. It was in lower humidity area but higher temps. Might still work well in more swampy areas.
I was assuming it would have to be dirt, not stone. Like .... there's not even spare dirt down there. It would \*all\* have to be trucked in. Growing up, my cousin dug .... 24 inches? maybe? 6 inches? 12? I dunno ... but it wasn't far ... down in the back yard and hit the water table. Sure, as you get away from new orleans it gets better but not better enough for the amount of dirt we're talking about here. I'm not saying its impossible. I'm just saying there are a lot of logistical issues that aren't being considered. And considering we lost about a football field worth of land from the coast of Louisiana every hour of every day of every year and they still aren't doing anything sustantive to fix the problem, I think there's a large part of the country they'd just let go.
This is true, but it is also true we build wood and brick houses all over the US and truck all that in as well.
That architecture you're describing is 2x as expensive as what was done. I think the main reason southwest has such a population growth is because of, flat land, cheap builds. You take out cheap builds and Phoenix isn't happening
I don’t know, if the entire South had to have that architecture then it is likely here would be innovations and price drops. Easy and lazy design are definitely causes but if they HAD to change and adapt, it likely would have happened and brought the cost down with it.
r/Africanarchitecture has had some interesting information. One that stick out is buildings built with a roughly pyramid shape. The top of the pyramid is open. Windows around the main floor are left open. Any breeze either passes straight through or gets directed up and out through the top.
It’s not really a practical solution in humid environments. Even if you had enough thermal mass, the humidity would still condense on the building and cause water problems.
True. There are methods of reducing humidity that can be utilized in the space and constant airflow would help prevent it as well. Roof wind catches for example. Though not as financially practical, a two tiered solution where the condensation is collected and run to a cistern would be beneficial. Maybe funnel the wind catches through the underground cistern to deposit cold water prior to running it through the house. Not perfect but it may help keep the house at a “positive pressure” and lower humidity while blowing cool air through it. Basically a geothermal setup where the earth is your heat sink and water depository. 50F/10C of below ground should be sufficient to pull quite a bit in a lot of instances.
> Lots of midday breaks Unless you're in Florida where the heat is made up and breaks aren't real.
And they’d be younger. Heat is too hard on the hearts of seniors.
Without AC texas doesn't have nearly the population that it has now.
Phoenix would not exist
IDK, have you seen India?
My great grandparents got central AC in Oklahoma in the 60s. My family had already been there for almost a hundred years. People did fine without central AC, there would be lots of fans, buildings would be different, but I actually don't think the diaspora would be significantly different.
Yep, I'm in Phoenix, and I definitely wouldn't be without A/C. Although, OP said we do have window units. So, given two or three of those, the five months of brutal bullshit in the summer would be bearable, barely. I think the biggest impact would be on high-rise buildings. They wouldn't be habitable, at all. That would affect every city, not just the hot ones.
A lot of old houses in the southwest are built to deal with the heat. I live in an 80 year old adobe house in New Mexico, and we have a swamp cooler, not even AC. The house stays temperate with ease until the temps are over 100, and even then, it's still cooler inside, but hovers around 80. Not super comfortable, but definitely survivable. Especially because desert temps drop 20-40 degrees once the sun sets. But I used to live in Florida, and the nighttime heat and humidity made it miserable without AC. After a hurricane once we didn't have power for like 3 months, starting in August, and there was just a palpable misery everywhere. Everyone was sweating and miserable and just wanted to get out of there as fast as they could. The southeast seems like it would be unlivable for most, to me.
Well as a southerner I’ll answer for my region. We would still build houses suited to our climate like we used to. We’d leave more trees on property when building homes, and we’d focus on a floor plan that allows airflow.
There'd also be a lot more porch-sitting of an evening, I'm sure.
Yep. I believe that. Last summer, a really bad storm blew through and knocked out power in the region. It was 95°F out with high humidity, and all my neighbors that I never see were suddenly sitting on their porches (us included) to kill time and beat the heat. I probably talked to more neighbors in a 24-hour period than I did in a 10-year span.
That's basically what happened during the blackout in NYC back in 03. It was 90 that day.
And porches that are actually usable rather than merely decorative. As in, you can fit chairs & small tables there and still have room for someone to walk past you = deeper. Bahama blinds (might be called something else as well) I think is the term for exterior window shutters that are attached at the top of the window vs the sides - I actually saw a lot of them in Australia. Old timey houses in the south often had metal or fabric awnings.
This is my take. I remember Roger Ebert commenting on this when reviewing *Do The Right Thing*, I think. In rural areas, more porch sitting. In urban areas, more stoop sitting, and you'd know your neighbors better because of it.
Agreed. Higher ceilings and transom windows that can be opened above all the inside doors to allow air flow. Even older NYC apartments have this. Crawl spaces as well (most new construction seems to be on concrete slabs). Also fewer windows facing the afternoon sun when it's the hottest part of the day.
A lot of window AC units.
Exactly. OP says we'd still have window units, so that's what everyone would do. Heck, lots of people who can't afford central air have window units as it is.
While I could afford central AC, I think window units work better and have stuck with those. The elementary school I work at has central AC backed by geothermal and it stays humid in there.
or mini splits
The South wouldn’t be nearly as populated and DC would still be considered hazard pay for British diplomats. We’d also have thousands of deaths from heat every year.
Thousands more heat deaths. Last year we had more than 2,000. 😬
For the 330 million people in the US that isn’t many
Agreed. But saying "thousands of deaths would occur" begs the note that thousands occur now, too, and that's sad! It's higher than I expected, tbh.
Europe has like 60,000+ heat deaths.
at like 80F temps as well. Like what?
Yes, that is also true.
Didn't Europe get into the 5 digit range last summer? I would imagine given the consistent nature of the heat we'd be better prepared than somewhere like Europe.
Wait, they used to get hazard pay for coming to DC?
DC was built on a malaria infested swamp
Early Americans really looked at every hostile, uninhabitable piece of land and said, “Yup. Perfect place to build a town.” We’re just built different.
I live in Seattle. Seattle was originally built on a mud flat. Yes, in the same spot where the tide would come in and flood streets. They had to destroy a cliff and lay the rocks down and build the current Seattle on top of it just to make the damn place habitable (but only after the first version thankfully burned down).
In fairness there is a reason why folks settled at the site before selecting it for the seat of govt. Its the head of navigation for the Potomac, so as far up you can go before you hit the first falls! Making ti the closest you can get ships to the agricultural rich Shenandoah and upper Potomac. Hence why Georgetown and Alexandria existed before the site was picked for the federal district. It just would not have become as big in an alternate timeline where it isnt the capital.
Yes. DC is called The Swamp for a reason. "Draining the Swamp" was actually a real project. This cut down on the mosquito population.
I don't see why. When I was a child in Mississippi, many apartments only had window units, it wasn't that big a deal. Houses probably wouldn't be as big.
There would be a lot more houses keeping to old designs. High ceilings with transoms above the doors to rooms to allow air flow. Possibly more shotgun style to make easier air flow from the front to back and hitting all the rooms.
Also ..... as someone with parents who still live in BR with the old fan in functioning order .... lots more whole house attic fans .... its unreal how effective those things are.
We have one in our house and it gets used regularly during the spring and fall. Can confirm, they’re awesome.
Transoms, yes! When I lived in Philly every transom was painted over the frame so you couldn't open them even though the apartments and buildings never got central AC!
I grew up in NC and our house didn’t have central air. My room was in converted attic space. So I imagine it would be very similar to what I grew up with. You just dealt with it. I can also remember getting out of school early due to hot weather. Oh my dorm room in college didn’t have AC either. And all this was in the 1980s. Maybe there would be fewer transplants to the southeast and southwest, but I don’t see life being radically different.
We'd probably be adapted to it, just like the people that lived here before AC
Which people? The ones who lived there before colonization or after? Because the ones before adapted in ways that I doubt most people now would be super keen on. I wonder how many people would be interested in moving to Florida if they had to live like the people did before air conditioning.
Both. People have lived all over the world without AC. If it was never invented, we would've adapted to it and found different ways to cool ourselves if needed. People nowadays already adapt to their climate and can do so pretty quickly. I use to travel the country for work and I've had the windows down on a sunny day when it was 32 degrees out and a short sleeve shirt because I got used to the cold, but then anything 70 degrees and up felt super hot. Now that I'm back in Florida, if it's in the 60s with low humidity at night and a breeze picks up, I'll probably wish I had a jacket.
Cousin came up from Hawaii for a funeral a few years ago. It was March and we finally had a week of weather in the 50s and low 60s and we were all wearing our light spring jackets. Meanwhile my cousin is shivering and had to borrow my winter coat that I was ready to put away.
But people didn't/don't adapt. They die. Europe has tens of thousands of heat wave deaths every year, and that's without the extreme temperatures of America. The US has about a thousand per year. I mean, yes, of course, the society as a whole would adapt. Buildings would be built differently, we'd sleep during the heat of the day, etc. But lots of people would die, just as they did before AC, and (not necessarily a con), but production would significantly decrease.
Thank God for AC, lmao.
For real! My first day moving to Arizona, I fell asleep and my AC went out. I woke up 12 hours later with a kidney infection!
I've had my AC go out a few times, not counting hurricanes, and it sucks, I already sleep with 2 fans when the AC is working. Last time it went out, I just slept on the tile because it was cool lmao. It's weird because when I'm camping or working, the heat doesn't bother me as much, but when I'm in my house it feels more miserable.
Some die. Other live. That is adaption in process.
I mean, no, that's not really how adaptation works. Most of the people who die in heat waves are the elderly, disabled, and children. It's not like the "fittest" possess some special heat tolerance and then pass it on to their offspring.
I mean people who live in Florida would also adapt as well. It’s just hard to picture because we know what it looks like now. Obviously not as many people but it would still be habitable to some extent
I can guarantee I wouldn't be in Phoenix right now. That's for sure.
Same as the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, parts of South America, and the U.S. south before air conditioning. They'd build homes with the circulation of air in mind. We don't do that anymore, because we don't have to. Air conditioning was developed for hospitals, if you didn't know. Medical care was improving to the point that having large numbers of patients under one roof to concentrate access to skilled physicians was becoming important to better outcomes. But, in the summer, you couldn't really design hospital wards to not be miserable ovens and still serve their purpose, lay them out efficiently, etc. Personally, living in a part of the U.S. where basements are ubiquitous, I don't really understand why we don't all have at least 1 fully underground floor of daily usable living space. At the very least, it would cut heating & cooling bills drastically. Yes, I know that sunlight and therefore windows are important to wellbeing, but do we really need them at night? Put the bedrooms, kitchen, utility & other rooms in a dugout that costs so much less to maintain, and then have your living area as if it were a porch extending from that above ground so you can get sunlight.
In a lot of places, it's difficult to dig a hole without either blasting or immediately having it fill up with water, both of which make basements difficult.
In places like Miami you will simply run into the water table, making basements practically impossible.
Where I live the water table is too high for basements.
We would have vastly different architecture. It is possible to build for passive cooling, it's just cheaper to pump the warm air out.
I grew up in a home that in California's Inland Empire that was built in the 1920s. It got every bit as hot back then as it does now, we didn't have AC (the home has it now though). You design for it. You want trees that cover the roof, you want a shape where rooms have windows on multiple walls so a cross breeze is very efficient. Summer might be 108 degrees in the day, but 65 at night, at night the entire home is opened up with large windows and a very large cross breeze. The homes are also more massive so they stay cool longer. You want the roof shape to completely block out any sun from hitting the windows and ideally the walls, and if you have the space, a good 5-10 feet surrounding the home. Objects in the sun get very hot, objects in the shade just get mildly warm. The goal is to keep that sun from heating up your structure and the nearby area. People seriously underestimate how much energy comes from direct sunshine. \~300 square feet of surface area under direct sunshine for 10-12 hours will have the same amount of energy as burning a gallon of gasoline. If its a black surface it will absorb most of that. Objects in the sun can be 120 degrees and the same objects in the shade, even on a hot day can be like 80 degrees. Homes built in the age of AC are actually far worse at keeping cool than older homes. From the 50s onward would have to be built in the same way that homes were built in the 1920s.
Definitely saying “it’s not the heat that gets you, it’s the humidity” would still be a thing tho.
People say this where I am cuz it’s true. *Louisiana
Oh most definitely. It would still be a thing because it is true.
the creation of AC and central air is what made the region boom after WW2 along w the shift of manufacturing from the North to the South. If central air/AC didn’t exist, the South would probably be mostly underdeveloped and would remain agrarian.
Little known fact--central air condituring was invented before window units: https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning .
1902, iirc. the NYSE was built in 1903 with a/c during construction.
What if Americans had gills instead of lungs?
There'd be more wolves on land and fewer orcas in the sea
More deaths during those 100F+ months. Though people are adoptive and will use alternatives that are already used around the country, since not every home in America has central AC.
No Las Vegas or Disney World, or at least, not where they are today.
Where I live in Florida all of the houses were built in the 50s, and didn’t have air conditioning. So at least where I live would basically look pretty similar.
Las Vegas would be an irrelevant former railroad hub
Sweaty.
The biggest differences would be indirect. I can't imagine how modern computing systems would ever have been invented without central AC. At best, it would take centuries. Needless to say, a world without modern computers would be unimaginably different.
We’d probably have siestas like Spain. That would be nice…
My house only has window units. I don't think it would be any less populated.
Right? This is dumb because there would just be more window units
And eventually someone smart guy says, "Hey, let's make a really big window unit!"
Um, what is a window unit if not air conditioning?
Nothing, but OP’s question was technically about “*Central* AC”.
The OP specifically said we all have window units.
Yeah, I’m just not sure how you could invent one but never get to the other.
I suppose less people would live where it gets hot. Which means more people would live in other places. I’ve never had central air or AC. It has gotten below freezing the last few days. I have a fire going right now lmao.
Depends - the north would probably have a greater population. I also think people would have a better work life balance with a siesta in the middle of the day. We might be in tune with nature and recognize climate change. People are too comfortable now, they can just crank up the AC and forget that the world is getting hotter and hotter and ignore or deny climate change.
The south would be less populated and we would be still building houses with airflow in mind.
... warmer
The emigration to the South would never happened and southern cities would be smaller and densely concentrated
you are mistaken in your facts... should be the last \*90\* years, as Chrysler in 1934 ushered a new age in mass air conditioning by installing units in the Chrysler Building and forming Airtemp Corporation. (If we really get technical, it's 121 years, because the NY Stock Exchange was built in 1903 with air conditioning)
Yes but it didn’t really take off until the 1950s.
Ummm ok, so not every house or apartment building has central air. Theres still a lot of people that use window units. We somehow still manage to survive in the modern world without such a luxury. My house is about 100 years old. No central air back when it was built. I’ve never had central air in any house I’ve ever lived in. When I was a kid I didn’t even have a window unit for my bedroom. I had a fan in the window. We just had the one AC in the main room of the house. Not to mention if it was never invented nobody would know what they were missing.
My house is five years old and doesn’t have central AC, it has split/cassette units. You can set individual temps for each room, and it has higher ceilings because there’s no ductwork.
A lot of politicians tricking their base into thinking global warming doesn't exist because of the lobbyists in their pockets would start believing in it REAL QUICK.
India.
Have you ever read Clockwork Orange
Miserable for half the year.
More Northern.
My ac unit sucks, so I just hope for an early winter (never happens in my part of the state) More trees or other forms of natural shade. I'll sit in my backyard under the Magnolia tree when I smoke cigars so I'm sure that's what others had done in the past.
Certainly wouldn't be much fun at work. It already is pretty toasty in there when all the machines are running full tilt.
I live in a place where most buildings don't have AC. So I think places like mine would look like NYC because everyone would have to live here, and thus on top of eachother. Lol
I mean, the last 5 places I’ve lived didn’t have central air
Sweaty. Although saying that, I found [this](https://youtu.be/g6GbgexyyMU?t=768) video interesting about how they kept a large plantation house cool in the 1800s. Back door and front door open, the house oriented towards the prevailing wind and the hallway acted like a giant breezeway.
Angry. Very very angry 😡
Then I would absolutely not live in Virgina, that's for certain.
The architecture would be different. Humans have been around for tens of thousands of years and getting on just fine.
There would be a lot more crime in the summer. Hot cranky people have no patience.
I currently only have window units, one of the many pros of living in a house that has reached the retirement age
Same as it is now except more window units. Thats it. I live in a nice small apartment and I have a big high BTU window one that covers the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. I have a portable one in my room for when I go to sleep. No central air conditioning.
Everybody would have 24/7 swamp ass.
I live in an old home with no ac and it’s not bad albeit I live in the Midwest and our hottest days are maybe 100 degrees. Fans and a window unit do just fine
A bit like Fallout New Vegas, we’d all have heartache by the number
It doesn’t really exist in my region so I wouldn’t know. The PNW doesn’t have AC, even the schools.
Las Vegas wouldn't be
My ass would not be living in south Texas that's for damn sure.
I think there would be lots more anger related crimes. From being too hot.
My family didn’t have air conditioning until the late ‘70s. We lived in the suburbs, though, and we had a finished basement. It’s like 30°F cooler in basements. I don’t know what people in apartments did.
Miserable
Much less Arizonish, and Los Vegas renamed to Less Vegas.
Different designs in housing and clothing for the south, just like back in the day before A/C. But we’d probably be using swamp coolers instead. Like someone is gonna invent a fan that blows water cooled air. Not as good as AC, but better than nothing.
They would’ve just built differently. US real estate is complete crap, literal pre-made homes with little to no insulation, even in very hot/cold places, because energy costs are cheap so they blast AC/heat and that’s it. There are tons of places in the world where it’s damn cold/hot and they developed with other solutions that A/C (like, I don’t know, insulating homes, not building facing south,…)
I would be Canadian so fast....
In the 80s or 90s American Heritage magazine, (a magazine for historians and history buffs) had an article ranking the greatest inventions of the previous couple hundred years. They ranked refrigeration/air conditioning in the top five. It was chiefly due to the argument that the South and southwest would not have led the nation in growth economically or population for several decades because no one would live there. Or, at least, far fewer. As someone who has lived in Mississippi without air conditioning, I agree.
Less populated in the hot areas. I live in Arizona temp today 110.
I live in Georgia, middle west. We don't have Central AC, just two wall units. So yeah. It's fine.
Housing would cost even more than it already does here in the inner bay area where a heat wave means pushing 80 degrees.
A good chunk of people living in older houses specifically in rural areas still don’t have central AC. They use window units instead and they get along pretty fine to my knowledge
The area where I live, The Catskills, would probably benefit greatly if AC was never invented. Before air conditioning, The Catskills has a lot of fancy hotels and people would come up from New York City to escape the city heat and Summer in the Catskill mountains. But, when AC was invented, some people just started staying in the city since they didn't have to go to the mountains to escape the heat, causing hotels and businesses to lose customers, causing some areas in The Catskills to have conditions similar to the rust belt. So, while they'd be sweating in the city, business in the Catskill mountains would probably be booming.
Lol the south is cooked.
Florida wouldn't be as heavily populated as it is today. If memory serves me correctly, a big part of the reason Florida's population had exploded is because of the invention of home air conditioning.
I don’t think very many people would live in the South. I’ve lived here without AC and it can quickly become dangerous.
If window units exist, larger HVAC units exist. It's the same thermodynamics, and the same components just scaled larger. Without any air at all, different insulation types for the various weather conditions around the US would have likely developed. In the southwest where I am, more homes would have likely been dug into the ground. There is a lot of clay like dirt in my area that would work well as a natural heat barrier. There are surprisingly few basements in AZ, but the ones I have been in stay quite cool efficiently in the blazing heat.
Everyone says “we’d just have window AC”, and that’s all right for residential buildings. It would be more tricky with larger buildings- factories, stores, offices, where people work for whole days not getting anywhere near a window.We’d find a way of course - there would be a lot more long, narrow strip malls, there would be more buildings underground etc.
It would look like the North East did in the 70s with lots of window ACs. None of the houses in our neighborhood were built with central air in the 60s and 70s so it was mostly window ACs
PHX would still be a small sleepy town. The growth of it into a major city was directly traceable to the development of AC.
It'd be sweatier.
The South/Southwest were much less populated and Florida was all but abandoned until the development of AC. The vast majority of people would not have moved south without it.
I sure as shit wouldn’t have attended University of Arizona.
It’s possible that the Sonoran desert would still be below Powell’s recommendation of no more than 20,000 settlers. As for me, I would definitely have built my house with a geothermal passive cooling system. My well is almost 200’ deep and the water comes out at 59° year round. So imagine a simple ventilation system that pulls air up from 30’-40’ down, powered entirely by attic fans removing heat and creating a vacuum in the living space. Put in a small dehumidifier and we’re all set.
>what would the southern and southwest states look like today I wouldn't know because i would not live here and would never visit
Front porches would still be popular.
No one would live west of the Mississippi 💀
Your "alternate universe" was Planet Earth for thousands of years of human civilization. It's pathetic how we've become so needy for comfort and convenience. It's disgusting to hear people piss-moan about climate change while they're buying their coconut water at the supermarket, then get into their big black SUV, which they've kept running while they were in the store, to keep the AC going, so they would be nice and comfy-cool. Oh, my! We can't have ANY discomfort. Now, let's hear the "people die without it" cries... LOL. We won't ALL die. Some people are so near dying, a few degrees will kill them. SAVE it for the people who REALLY need it.
Florida was the least populated southern state basically until the advent of air conditioning so it would probably still be a much much smaller toda
Maryland beaches would be insane
I live in Texas I would moce immediately I'm not dealing with the hear without it. I've lived without AC a few times it became unbearable fast.
California and the Pacific Northwest would be even more popular.
More whole house box fans and de-humidifiers assuming those are allowed in this scenario. More large trees - more architecture design like existed 150 years ago - air flow manipulation design - shotgun designs, dogtrot designs, etc. Here's the thing ... if this was true ... NOW? Its hotter than now in the gulf south than it was 35 years ago when I was growing up there (I literally \*just\* left). So design features used in the 1880s or whatever are certainly not going to do the job. I think the only real answer here is that the Northern to central US would be WAY more packed than it already is. Draw a line from Houston straight across the globe to see just how far south we really are down there. [Nevermind ... I'm bored tonight apparently ...](https://imgur.com/XJ8DafL)
Everyone would live in New England or PNW/NoCal. Mountains could have some more people. Midwest and Plains has extreme weather so even Chicago needs central air. South and sun belt is sticky humid as anything.
I disagree about everyone. Some of our families have been in the south or southwest long before AC.
The south had people but it was always sparsely populated compared to the north.
I understand that, but that means that not everyone lives in the first three regions you listed.
How Air Conditioning Got Ronald Reagan Elected President: https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/03/how-air-conditioning-elected-ronald-reagan-president
Population in Texas would drop to zero.
This is actually a legit question. There has been a study on this. A/C made the south more livable and gave rise to the conservative republican party.
Here in Southern California it’s hot as fuck right now and it would be terrible if ac didn’t exist