Sustainable Block Design Process for High-Rise and High-Density Districts with Snow and Wind Simulations for Winter Cities

Norihiro Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Setoguchi, Kosuke Maeda, Daiki Iwakuni, Zhiming Guo and Takuya Tsutsumi
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Norihiro Watanabe: Division of Architectural and Structural Design, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8628, Japan
Tsuyoshi Setoguchi: Division of Architectural and Structural Design, Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8628, Japan
Kosuke Maeda: Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei, Inc., Chiyoda, Tokyo 100-0005, Japan
Daiki Iwakuni: Takenaka Corporation, Chuo, Osaka 541-0053, Japan
Zhiming Guo: Division of Architectural and Structural Design, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8628, Japan
Takuya Tsutsumi: Northern Regional Building Research Institute, Hokkaido Research Organization, Asahikawa, Hokkaido 078-8801, Japan

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-18

Abstract: Urban designs that consider regional climatic conditions are one of the most important approaches for developing sustainable cities. In cities that suffer from heavy snow and cold winds in winter, an urban design approach different than that used for warm cities should be used. This study presents a scientific design process (the sustainable design approach) that incorporates environmental and energy assessments that use snow and wind simulations to establish guidelines for the design of urban blocks in high-rise and high-density districts so that the impact of snow and wind can be minimized in these cities. A city block in downtown Sapporo, Japan, was used as a case study, and we evaluated four conceptual models. The four models were evaluated for how they impacted the snow and wind conditions in the block as well as the snow removal energy. Based on the results, we were able to identify the design guidelines in downtown Sapporo: an urban block design with higher building height ratio without the mid-rise part can reduce the snowdrifts and lower the snow removal energy. The proposed sustainable urban design approach would be effective in improving the quality of public spaces and reducing snow removal energy in winter cities.

Keywords: winter city; wind tunnel; urban block design; snow simulation; energy assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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