I lived 8 years on Cape Cod in Falmouth Massachusetts. This was in the late 1960’s.
We didn’t have air conditioning in the house or car. It wasn’t needed. It did get warm but the breezes off the ocean kept that area bearable.
Dad got transferred to an Air Base in Louisiana. My parents had air conditioning installed in the cars very soon after we moved. 
Are there still areas where AC is uncommon or unneeded?
Do you live somewhere without Air Conditioning? In your car? Home?
Pretty much the whole of Northern Europe.
I’m in Oregon. It’s rare we need AC, maybe for a week or two out of the year.
Thinking back, Cape Cod was probably the same way. There must of been a week or two that AC would have been nice. People weren’t willing to spend the money to get it installed for such limited use.
In the 1960’s AC was an expensive option in cars. You didn’t get it unless it was really needed.
I think now AC is standard equipment in cars?
I don’t know anyone “IRL” who has air conditioning in their house (that I know of), but we do have it in our cars, though we use it rarely. On the other hand air conditioning is present in basically all public buildings like shopping centres and so on. I live in Brisbane, Australia.
Yes. I’m from the Netherlands and I don’t know anyone there who has it.
Here in Italy I think it’s about 50% even though it can get very hot. I don’t have any. I also think that when there is airco it’s not run as full-tilt as in the States.
Anywhere along the immediate Pacific coast, from Seattle to San Diego, summer high temperatures range from the upper 50s (Sunset district of San Francisco) to the low 70s (vicinity of LAX, also the city of San Diego).
We’re in Maine, and very few people have central air. After several 95+ degree days a few weeks ago, we finally got a window unit, and used it that day…then the weather returned to normal and we haven’t needed it since.
Cars, though, are different. If you’re sitting still for any period of time in a car, it gets really hot, even with the windows down. And having the windows down on the freeway is kind of a pain, especially if you’ve got long hair, so car AC is mandatory for me.
More and more people have central air, in upscale homes, hereabouts. We’re having a sweltering summer so they all feel like genius’s. I hate the damn things, but then I loath continuous lows noises like fans, and humming fishtanks. It annoys me to hear my neighbours unit running when I’m sitting out on my patio, especially since it’s now lovely and cooled off and they wouldn’t need the air con if they’d just shut the thing off and open the damn windows. But that’s way too much work once you’re accustomed to just hitting the button to chill and circulate air.
We have a window unit which we install in the dining room, even in this sweltering summer, we don’t use it very often. When I come in from walking the dog, we both crash right in front of it, switch it on, but it only runs maybe 20 mins, and we are magically restored.
Cars however, it’s rare to find one without air conditioning, these days.
When I lived in Cleveland, central air conditioning at houses and apartments was more the exception rather than the norm. It was standard in most newer houses an apartments, though.
My circa 1950 house had central air, and it was a godsend during the summer, when there was a heat wave or bout of high humidity. If it was below 80 (27 C) and there was a decent breeze, though, I’d open the windows.
When I lived in southern New Mexico, residential refrigerated air conditioning was uncommon, believe it or not. Most people had swamp coolers.
Northern Michigan here. Central AC is pretty rare, though window/portable units are common. It’s hard to justify the cost of AC though it is sometimes nice to have. The last two summers we didn’t use our portable units at all; in fact, we had the fireplace going more than once in July & August.
This year’s been hotter, and we use the portable units in the bedroom and my office (I work from home, my office and our bedroom is on the top floor of the house.) Husband’s office is in the basement, and it’s never too hot there.
Overall, given that adding central air to our house would be an incredible amount of money (at least $15-$20K as we don’t have forced air heat, therefore no ductwork in place to route air through), we’re fine with what we have.
In homes, yes. There’s really no need for it. But AC is fast becoming standard in cars, and almost all modern office buildings and shops are air-conditioned.
Even in cars, it is of questionable value here. My AC broke down some time in the last few months - I say “some time” because I only realised a couple of weeks ago, not having had any need for it for months. I actually find it more useful in winter, for demisting.
That surprises me. The warmest month in Brisbane (January) is similar to the warmest month in New York or Philadelphia (July) in terms of both temperature and humidity.
I can hardly imagine living without A/C in NY or Philly. I live in Maine where it’s several degrees cooler and I wouldn’t continue to live here without the window air conditioners that I use maybe 15 or 20 days a year. If air conditioners had never been invented, I would have long ago moved to Alaska.
Large hunks of Southern Europe too, as I have learned to my displeasure. In 2007, I think it was, a whole bunch of people in Greece died in the summer heat. I wasn’t too far away and there were times when I thought I was going to die.
AC is not common in Northern California, where I grew up, either. I guess newer houses have central heating/cooling, but older houses, like the one I grew up in, don’t. Window units are very unusual. Everyone makes do with ceiling fans.
We only have window units here in Vermont, but this summer, I wish we had the real thing.
I don’t know anyone with centeral air conditioning, but on the other hand I don’t know anyone without window ACs, eithr. This summer has been the hottest in years and years, but I’m not sure one hot summer is going to convince people to invest in centeral air conditioning. But if it happens next summer too, then maybe…
I live on the NC coast and it is very hot and I can not imagine people not having AC. It didn’t occur to me until now that people in the north don’t have it (I don’t get out much).
Around here, there’s typically about three days a year when it’s just too hot, and you can generally just arrange to spend those days in the office or at a movie theater or something, or head up into the mountains. Even if none of that’s an option, suffering through three days of too damn hot probably isn’t worth springing for air conditioning.
It’s common in cars, though, which I think is down to it being cheaper to just install AC in all new cars for the American market than to try to split up the market and make some with, some without.
In Arizona and most of the sunbelt, it’s pretty much mandatory. Two years ago my AC broke down. It took a week to get it fixed. In that time I had to move into a hotel room because I couldn’t stay in the house for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. It was hotter inside than it was outside. And I’m a long-time Arizonan resident; at the time I had a roommate of frailer constitution who wasn’t used to the heat, as well as some longhaired cats who really, really weren’t happy.
Of course, with some buildings it’s a chicken-and-egg problem of sorts. Newer architecture assumes the presence of AC, and so doesn’t go to any great lengths to ensure a home is well ventilated and moderately comfortable without central air. If my windows didn’t face south and west, I probably wouldn’t need to run the AC nearly as much as I do.
It’s pretty rare here in Santa Fe. Summers typically aren’t too hot, in large part due to our ‘monsoon season’, where we get brief, heavy rain just about every afternoon. It’s remarkable when it gets into the 90’s, and the air is so thin that it cools off a lot at night.