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While I am glad to read researchers are building a digital twin of Singapore to help figure out how to make living spaces more thermally comfortable ( June 2), I feel that having government agencies coordinating and working in lockstep will have a more immediate impact on reducing the heat island effect. Recent upgrading works to the HDB town centre shop areas bounded by Ang Mo Kio Avenues 3, 6 and 8 resulted in hard concrete surfaces covering the spaces between the rows of shops. On a hot day, one cannot escape the intensity of the heat radiating from the blazing sun above and the heated hard court below. Some pockets of greenery breaks will go a long way in mitigating this. Hard courts may be relatively maintenance-free, but will extract a bigger environmental price as residents and shops nearby have to resort to more air-conditioning. I support the experts delving into heat studies, but a good starting point is to generally be mindful of the big picture. Not doing things that go in the opposite direction of your goal is already a big start.