My understanding of the rise of AC is that it's often taken as a simple and necessary technological innovation, but that view seems to me to understate the existence of alternatives to AC both in the form of architectural practice(designs and building materials that were more suited to natural or passive ventilation) and in the form of cultural practices(longer vacations outside of cities, less active office activity and school breaks during the hottest part of the summer, or lunch being a more substantial meal). My question, then, is how was AC able to displace these other means for adjusting to seasonal or regional hot weather?
The various practices you describe were used, to some extent, in the southern US. But they are only so effective in dealing with near-tropical heat.
As the South became more industrial and as business and educational practices established in more northerly cities became the norm, it became less practical for the South to conduct a completely different kind of existence. Luckily, near-universal electrification was followed within a few decades by small, inexpensive air conditioning units. AC didn't displace the other means: it first supplemented them and then the more burdensome or expensive traditional methods were gradually abandoned as less necessary.
The same trend is apparent in tropical Asia and Africa. Though these cultures have had thousands of years to adapt cultural and construction practices to the heat, they nonetheless have happily embraced air conditioning as rapidly as they can afford it.