["Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, EarlyView. ", "\nTropical urban dwellers face twin climate challenges that impinge on their quality of life: climate overheating and the urban heat island (UHI). The latter superimposed on the former to lead to high levels of thermal discomfort, carbon and energy consequences. Climate‐sensitive solutions are urgently needed in tropical cities at urban level as opposed to the current approach of cooling one building at a time. Climate sensitive building design in the tropics typically focuses on ‘linking of in and out,’ with porous building skin. The climate challenge is increasingly making contemporary design to sever this link, leading not only to energy intensive solutions, but also to the transfer of the problem to the public realm with its attendant urban climate consequences. What form should climate sensitive cities take in the tropics? Past approaches alone may not hold all the answers for the contemporary climate challenge. This paper argues for a new tropical urbanism that is based on four pillars: (i) urban design – centred on shading and ventilation; (ii) urban planning – street‐centred quality‐of‐life approach to land use; (iii) urban politics – heat disaster risk resilience planning; and (iv) urban culture – approaches to ‘coolth’ as a wellbeing issue.\n"]