As cities race to amp up their heat mitigation efforts, some are replacing bare-bones cooling centers with full-service "climate resilience hubs" — offering everything from comfy A/C and phone charging to social services and emergency training.

Why it matters: While "resilience hubs" are meant for everyone and all kinds of climate disasters, they're particularly aimed at low-inc0me residents and people of color, who tend to suffer disproportionately as temperatures rise.

Driving the news: Chastened by heat waves that have often turned fatal, cities and states are starting to plan, fund and build climate resilience hubs — souped-up community centers modernized for the current heatpocalypse.

What they're saying: "The evolution has happened pretty quickly" from cooling centers — which people didn't necessarily use because of COVID-19 and limited services — to the more expansive "climate resilience hub" model, says Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

Zoom out: Cities are appointing "chief heat officers" and "chief resilience officers," who are pushing the hub model alongside various climate-focused nonprofits.

Yes, but: There are lots of challenges, from getting people to seek shelter during a heat emergency to conflicting visions of what "resilience hubs" should be and how they should operate — and ensuring that they function as more than de facto homeless shelters.

One model: A Boston-based nonprofit called Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW) has built a network of 109 resilience hubs in college and municipal libraries. (Here's a map.)

The bottom line: As helpful as they could potentially be, most "resilience hubs" are still in the planning stages, so they're too late for this summer — yet already long overdue.