Small shops manage to operate in, say, Arizona during those hours.

That said, I think Spain's hours are a more natural adaptation to the climate than Arizona's.

Arizona is in the car-centric USA. You walk straight from your car with AC into a shop with AC via the shortest path possible.

Spain, like most Europe is a lot more pedestrian/cyclist friendly and I'd imagine that traffic drops off a lot during the heat of the day.

I live in Canada which isn't anything near as hot as Arizona or Spain and I walk/cycle everywhere and I specifically avoid going anywhere from 11am-2pm in July/August if I can help it. sample-size=1, your mileage may vary.

Okay, I'm a Canadian living in Spain and can tell you, from 1200 - 1900 in the summer the sun hurts, and yeah, a lot of stuff is done locally = walking or biking (usually walking).

It is much easier in local towns and villages to walk around and get what you need rather than take a car, often a more difficult thing to do given parking scarcity, and really not necessary given that there are many options for going local. I have two supermarkets within a KM of my home, 16 (!) cafeteria/bars/restaurants, and most other services are covered (banks, dry cleaner, gas station etc). In larger cities (Barcelona, Madrid and smaller cities) the neighborhoods tend to have most things. You really only do the long drive to hit larger supermarkets or to go to a mall or something.

Shops manage to be open in the Middle East, Africa and Asia where it gets much warmer than Spain and in many places with much less favorable conditions.

I've been to the south of Spain it's hot but 35c isn't unbearable in the middle of the day.

Yes, in India, shops don't close in the middle of the day. But business is very slow during those few hours.

I remember back in the early 90s when I visited, Chennai certainly did have siesta periods. It wasn't everyone though, but enough that you couldn't be sure.

35C is bad for physical labour, but it's certainly tolerable for things like retail.

Yet another Canadian here yeah we grind to a halt at anything near 30C.

I'm in the humid Maritimes it's 28C but with the humidity it feels like 40C.

> Arizona is in the car-centric USA. You walk straight from your car with AC into a shop with AC via the shortest path possible.

Melbourne has summers that are nearly as hot as Phoenix. AC isn't so prevalent here, yet the shops don't change their hours in summer.

Often I think of Canada having the same problems as Arizona, but in reverse (cold instead of hot). Except it sure is convenient that the coldest part of the day is when everyone is asleep.

That's not terribly relevant these days, though.

For the same reasons you mention it makes 2pm in the afternoon the worst time to be on break and out of your air conditioned office or workplace.

Is 11-2 really the hottest part of your day? That may be when the sun is highest in the sky, but usually the hottest temperatures of the day are closer to late afternoon.

It doesn't matter so much what time the air is actually the hottest, but what time the sun will burn you.

I'd take 37 C air in the shade over 35 C in the midday sun any time.

Until recently, most Arizonans also grew English-style grass lawns, with water that had to be piped in and species that are certainly not native.

Apparently that's rapidly ending, so maybe the standard schedule will change as well someday.

> Apparently that's rapidly ending, so maybe the standard schedule will change as well someday.

Those hours are pretty ingrained in US culture, though, and virtually no one (compared to the present population) would live in Arizona without massive amounts of air conditioning anyway, whereas conserving water has a direct economic advantage in the here and now.

> virtually no one would live in Arizona without massive amounts of air conditioning

I presume you mean south of Flagstaff. It's actually quite nice in the north :)

I wouldn't say most Arizona homeowners had grass lawns, as far as Phoenix goes, there are districts such as arcadia that have very large lawns, but I would say that is limited to specific areas.

There are many plants that are not native that still grow very well ranging from Mediterranean species to some that are from the desert regions of Asia.

*edit (Thu Jul 20 13:35:05 EDT 2017) I about parts of Chandler and Gilbert still have water rights tied to the property.

You fly into Phoenix and the rampant waste and misuse of water is obvious. All those lawns and pools sitting idly by while Arizona (and California) drink far too deeply from the Colorado and other rivers.

Arizona has always managed its water supply far better than California. And a flyover is misleading, most houses have natural yards and the lawns are all special summer grass adapted to the heat.

Don't forget the people who have painted their dirt/rocks green. From the air, it'd look like grass. (from the street - not so much)

>special summer grass adapted to the heat.

My point is how much water does it take even for that. If what you were saying is true, I'd expect to see that grass growing all over Phoenix and it would be green rather than red.

It does consume water, but again we manage our water well. I think most people are under the mistaken impression that fresh water is in short supply. The problem is that our water supplies could easily be a free market while still being ecologically friendly. They could easily limited to reusable and naturally refreshed sources, and not drain rivers like the Colorado below safe levels. Market prices would ensure water was used efficiently.

But instead California gave away massive free water rights to landowners who use it to farm in their deserts. Over 90% of their fresh water is given to farmers to grow crops a little cheaper than farmers in other states who aren't raping water supplies, and so bad farming and water usage drives out good.

While that's a real problem it seems to me like agriculture is a better use of a scarce resource than lawns.

With the invention of air conditioning and an abundance of solar power during the desert day, it's pretty stupid to let the weather dictate your behavior.

People exist in Chicago despite the fact that it would be completely inhospitable without heating sources. The only difference is that air conditioning is a newer invention so people like you view it as some kind of opulent luxury rather than a technological tool like anything else.

You're comparing 2 different things though. Heating/AC is required for people's survival whereas green lawns in the middle of an arid desert... not so much.

No I'm not. I'm literally comparing air conditioning to heating. Read my comment again.

> With the invention of air conditioning and an abundance of solar power during the desert day, it's pretty stupid to let the weather dictate your behavior.

Not everyone works in an office, though.

Same thing applies to the cold in the North.

> With the invention of air conditioning and an abundance of solar power during the desert day, it's pretty stupid to let the weather dictate your behavior.

You do have to go outside to get anywhere. We don't have completely domed cities yet.

We sort of do. My 20 mile commute in Seattle involves about 100 feet of walking outside the "dome". I go from my house to my attached garage into my car. To the park-n-ride. From there I walk to the bus. Then ride the bus downtown, where i then walk half a block to my office.

Same thing applies to the cold in Chicago/New York.

Sounds like a decent chunk of the population could deal with living on a Mars colony :)

Try to go out with 45 degrees, with direct sunlight, etc. Some people will even faint within minutes. Because remember you don't get teleported to the shop, you have to walk.

It was 48 degrees in Phoenix a couple weeks ago. We all walked around outside successfully without fainting.

I congratulate you to a good health. Here in sweden people drop dead when temp goes above 25 C. All depends on your health...

Phoenix is not even in the same conversation as Spanish cities when it comes to walking. Madrid, Barcelona and others you walk everywhere to do anything.

As they say about Phoenix, "it's a dry heat". It's near 20% humidity during peak sunlight during the day. I've been there in really hot summer weather and I was surprised by how really high temperatures didn't feel as hot as I was expecting. To give you an idea of how much this matters, in a gentle breeze, 39.5 C at 20% humidity feels like 57.3 C at 90% humidity.

People definitely don't faint within minutes in a typical Phoenix sunlight. The biggest risks are sunburn and dehydration, both of which take a lot longer.

> To give you an idea of how much this matters, in a gentle breeze, 39.5 C at 20% humidity feels like 57.3 C at 90% humidity.

That cannot possibly be correct.

Humidity has a massive multiplication effect on both cold and hot temperatures.

I would take 110F dry over 80F humid any day. I would also take 10F dry over 30F humid.

The prior claim was that, in a gentle breeze, 135F and 90% RH was the same as 103F and 20% RH (that hotter AND more humid was the same as less hot and drier).

Sorry, I meant to say that 57.3 C at 20% humidity feels the same as 39.5 C at 90% humidity.

I have in the Phoenix and Death Valley deserts. I think you don't understand the difference between low humidity heat and high humidity heat. The latter is intolerable and causes the problems you described. The former just requires adequate hydration.

I'm from a much milder but still hot climate, and while the summer weather probably wouldn't make you faint in minutes, people spent very little time outside of air conditioned homes, cars, and shops, and the towns were designed around that fact.

have spent much time in 110+ degree weather - you just have to hydrate.

What's the humidity there though? In much of the Southern US, we get temps well above 100 with very high levels of humidity. Even with hydration it is dangerous.

Yes, but at the cost of running crazy air conditioning. The only time I visited Phoenix I arrived near lunchtime and was baffled to be wandering around a seemingly modern city where the streets were entirely free of people. I felt like it I was in the opening scene of a zombie movie or something.

Personally speaking I've never seen much value in living by the clock if it puts you in conflict with the seasons. The notion that people everywhere should adhere to the same schedule regardless of local conditions is inherently absurd.

Because of the way thermodynamics works, it's much more energy efficient to simply move heat around (air conditioning) than it is to create it from scratch (heating). It costs several times the annual energy to live in Maine than it does to live in Phoenix, for example. We could save a substantial amount on our overall national residential energy budget by moving people from cold areas of the country to Phoenix.

You can heat by moving energy around, too (heat pumps). Indoor/outdoor temperature differentials are admittedly greater in cold-climate winter than hot-climate summer, but on the other hand natural solar heating (greenhouse effect due to windows) is working for you in the winter but against you in the summer.

Sadly in Phoenix you'll find the streets entirely free of people year-round. Even when the weather is nice (Oct-Apr). I am one who walks, and often wonder if I'm just crazy when I notice I'm pretty much the only human not inside a car just walking about. I also not wonder but know it's true when I realize that hey, it really is too damn hot some days and being outside is just nuts.

For the first half of this year, I was walking about 10 miles a day through Seattle suburbs to get to/from work. During that time I think I encountered exactly two other long distance walkers, and everyone else who was outside seemed to be walking to a bus stop or taking their dog out to poop. (I've noticed that a lot of older Indian couples will get out and take a walk around the block in the afternoon, though.) I think it has something to do with cable television and Facebook.

Not just Arizona - this happen even right in the middle of downtown & midtown Atlanta, on streets surrounded by skyscrapers on either side.

I was visiting in April a few years ago and was really surprised how empty the sidewalks were despite the beautiful weather - you would see more people outside walking in a non-central residential neighborhood in berlin in the rain.

My guess would be that Spaniards are more likely to travel on foot or bicycle than Arizonans.

Go into a restaurant or small shop during the 3 hours between 2pm and 5pm, and you can see they might as well be closed (generally).

Restaurants refer to those hours specifically as "dead hours" in my experience.

Restaurants closed at 2PM? That's when most of Spaniards start having lunch...

Would it be too much to ask Arizona to change, then ?

I always thought the Carolinas should do the same thing--no reason to be out doing things in that brutal, mid-day humidity in the summer.

>Small shops manage to operate in, say, Arizona during those hours.

With full on blaring air-conditioning and everybody driving around gus-guzzlers to go 1km further down.

That's not how Spanish cities are built, or the culture they enjoy.

How many small shops in Arizona are located in air-conditioned malls though?

Everything is air conditioned in AZ. Very few people would live there otherwise.

It is the same all over in southern Greece, for the same reasons. Shops in city and country close until the blasting heat of the midday sun is past, then re-open for a few hours. On the islands some would stay open past midnight, which ended up being a fun time to go shopping.